Question: Violence is often directed at women. Won’t more guns put more women at risk?
Lott: Murder rates decline when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but a gun represents a much larger change in a woman’s ability to defend herself than it does for a man. An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men.
Question: Aren’t you playing into people’s fears and prejudices though? Don’t politicians pass these shall-issue laws to mollify middle-class white suburbanites anxious about the encroachment of urban minority crime?
Lott: I won’t speculate about motives, but the results tell a different story. High crime urban areas and neighborhoods with large minority populations have the greatest reductions in violent crime when citizens are legally allowed to carry concealed handguns.
Question: What about other countries? It’s often argued that Britain, for instance, has a lower violent crime rate than the USA because guns are much harder to obtain and own.
Lott: The data analyzed in this book is from the USA. Many countries, such as Switzerland, New Zealand, Finland, and Israel have high gun-ownership rates and low crime rates, while other countries have low gun ownership rates and either low or high crime rates. It is difficult to obtain comparable data on crime rates both over time and across countries, and to control for all the other differences across the legal systems and cultures across countries. Even the cross country polling data on gun ownership is difficult to assess, because ownership is underreported in countries where gun ownership is illegal and the same polls are never used across countries.
Question: This is certainly controversial and there are certain to be counter-arguments from those who disagree with you. How will you respond to them?
Lott: Some people do use guns in horrible ways, but other people use guns to prevent horrible things from happening to them. The ultimate question that concerns us all is: Will allowing law-abiding citizens to own guns save lives? While there are many anecdotal stories illustrating both good and bad uses of guns, this question can only be answered by looking at data to find out what the net effect is.
All of chapter seven of the book is devoted to answering objections that people have raised to my analysis. There are of course strong feelings on both sides about the issue of gun ownership and gun control laws. The best we can do is to try to discover and understand the facts. If you agree, or especially if you disagree with my conclusions I hope you’ll read the book carefully and develop an informed opinion.
At the beginning of the conversation the interviewer asks about.______the title of the book
John R. Lott mentions all of the following except.illness rate
The number of interviewer's questions is________.2
One of the following is not mentioned in the interview.kidnapping
John R. Lott argues that the more people obtain permits, the greater is _________in violent crime rates.decline
In this interview, John R. Lott argues that.______the more people own guns, the less crime is committed
A concealed handgun law is the law that allows adults the right_______ such guns.to carry
As a concealed handgun law is in effect the robberies rate declines by ______percent.2