John Lott

Media Matters Tries to Shut Down John Lott

And the left-wing totalitarian urge to suppress dissent surfaces yet again, this time at the far left Media Matters.

The issue, but of course, is gun control. And Dr. John Lott, the renowned gun control expert who has made a life’s work of studying gun control and its flaws, was in the sights of Media Matters even before this latest shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas that left 26 dead inside a small church.

Note the Media Matters headline in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting:

Discredited gun researcher John Lott’s misleading Las Vegas massacre claims are falling apart
Lott doesn’t want readers to know that strong gun regulations are associated with lower levels of homicide

Note that description? “Discredited gun researcher” is how they describe Lott, who’s thorough research is anything but discredited. In fact Lott’s work is so thorough that a representative of the gun control-crazed Michael Bloomberg’s “Every town for Gun Safety” project refused outright to discuss guns with Lott on a C-SPAN show two years ago.

The other week Media Matters threw a fit when the Washington Post Fact Checker committed the cardinal sin of talking to Dr. Lott to help evaluate Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy’s claim on CNN that “What we know is that states that have tougher gun laws, that keep criminals from getting guns, that keep those dangerous weapons like AR-15s out of the hands of civilians, have dramatically lower rates of gun violence.” The Post fact-checker gave Murphy’s claim “three Pinocchios.” Media Matters approvingly quotes Dan Webster of the Bloomberg School of Public Health who instantly jumped on the liberal Post, saying: “I recognize that especially on an issue considered divisive like guns, media feel the need to report ‘both sides.’ But offering the opinions of widely-discredited pundits is not ‘presenting the other side.’”

In other words, Media Matters, using a Bloomberg spokesperson, is desperately trying to shut Lott up. Which, of course, is the MM routine. An organization that devotes itself to removing conservatives from television and radio surely has no problem in trying to silence one of the leading and most respected experts on gun control and the realities of its failures.

Curiously, there is not a peep from Media Matters about the utter failure of the very strict gun control regulation that was supposed to have stopped Devin Patrick Kelley’s Texas shooting spree. Kelley had a 2012 court-martial on his Air Force record, replete with two counts of domestic assault. The tough gun control regulation in this case would have prevented Kelley from getting a weapon because the Hollomon Air Force Base Office of Special Investigations was supposed to have entered this information into the National Criminal Information Center database. Which in turn would have prevented Kelley from getting his gun when it was time for his background check. But because of what is presumably human error, this very tough gun control regulation did not work and Kelley, clearly a man with a violent temper, got his weapon.

And the Media Matters response? The group is trying to distract from this monumental failure of a “tough gun control law” by diverting into a broad attack on the media for not doing more to focus on domestic abuse.

The hard fact here is that a “tough gun control” regulation was in fact in place. It is federal law that a conviction of domestic violence not to mention getting a dishonorable discharge from the military are not allowed to purchase a firearm.

Which is to say, the Media Matters left-wing idea that gun control will prohibit mass shootings just suffered a major failure.

Which in turn has everything to do with why Media Matters is so desperate to try and discredit Dr. Lott. Recall again the Media Matters headline:

“Lott doesn’t want readers to know that strong gun regulations are associated with lower levels of homicide”

As was just seen in Texas, that Media Matters headline is exactly wrong.