Gun control Liar of the Day: Senator Dianne Feinstein

Economist John Lott has a very interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal relating “The Facts About Assault Weapons and Crime.”  He relates much useful information about the nature of “assault weapons” – those chimerical beasts whose ever-shifting identity depends almost entirely on what they look like.

Lott addresses Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and her push for a renewed “assault weapons ban,” and very politely calls her a liar:

    Ms. Feinstein points to two studies by criminology professors Chris Koper and Jeff Roth for the National Institute of Justice to back up her contention that the ban reduced crime. She claims that their first study in 1997 showed that the ban decreased “total gun murders.” In fact, the authors wrote: “the evidence is not strong enough for us to conclude that there was any meaningful effect (i.e., that the effect was different from zero).”

    Messrs. Koper and Roth suggested that after the ban had been in effect for more years it might be possible to find a benefit. Seven years later, in 2004, they published a follow-up study for the National Institute of Justice with fellow criminologist Dan Woods that concluded, “we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”