On CBC, Media Matters' Timothy Johnson Debunks Discredited Gun Researcher John Lott's Lie That Guns Make Women Safer

Johnson: “When You Have Firearms In A Home, It Increases The Danger That Women Will Be Murdered”

From the June 15 edition of Canadian Broadcasting Company's The Current

Video file

JOHN LOTT: The second group of people that benefit the most are people who are relatively weaker physically, women and the elderly. There's a lot of academic research that indicates that a woman having a gun benefits much more than a man does, because you have a larger strength differential between a male attacking a female victim and a male attacking a male victim. 

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI (HOST): Of course, there's also research that shows women are actually more vulnerable, not on the streets, where they need a gun, but at home, where the perpetrator calls them “honey,” domestic violence. 

LOTT: The problem with that -- well, that's not peer-reviewed research. That's [Michael] Bloomberg's group, OK? So, if you look at peer-reviewed, actually academic research, that's not the case. There's a problem when you look at what we call purely cross-sectional data, just looking at different places at the same point in time. 

[...]

TREMONTI: We're going to go back to Timothy Johnson, the guns and public safety program director for Media Matters. Timothy Johnson, briefly, what's your response?

TIMOTHY JOHNSON: Let me respond to a couple of those points. Mr. Lott is very good at throwing out a lot of claims during a short amount of time, but I think often they're not substantiated. Just for example, Mr. Lott just claimed that research showing that gun ownership poses a special danger to women, or that guns in the home are a special risk to women. Mr. Lott claimed that that data comes from gun control groups and that there's no peer-reviewed analysis. Well, I'm looking right now at a peer-reviewed analysis in the Annals of Internal Medicine about the accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members, and according to that meta-analysis, when you have firearms in a home, it increases the danger that women will be murdered.

Previously:

CNN Allows Discredited Gun Researcher John Lott To Push 5 Myths About Guns In 7-Minute Interview

Discredited Gun Researcher John Lott Calls It “Inflammatory” To Point Out San Bernardino Was The 355th Mass Shooting This Year In The U.S.

CBS Evening News Allows Discredited Researcher John Lott To Falsely Connect Gun Laws To Higher Murder Rates