John Lotts’s More Guns, Less Crime Now in Expanded Edition

Few books have had the scale of impact on a public policy debate more than has More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, by John R. Lott, Jr. Now a decade after its first release and the raging debate it launched, the book is available as a less expensive paperback in an expanded and updated third edition from the University of Chicago Press. Relying on comprehensive data analysis of crime statistics and right-to-carry laws, the book challenges common perceptions about the relationship of guns and violent crime. For this third edition, Dr. Lott draws on an additional ten years of data—including provocative analyses of the effects of gun bans in Chicago and Washington, D.C.—that brings the book up to date and further bolsters its central theme.

In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2008 decision for the Second Amendment pertaining to the D.C. gun ban and federal jurisdictions overall in Heller v. District of Columbia, the Court is about to rule in the case of McDonald v. Chicago regarding the Chicago gun ban on whether the Second Amendment applies to States and localities as well.

In this regard, the Independent Institute will be hosting a very timely event regarding the McDonald case at our conference center in Washington, D.C., on June 8th, “The Supreme Court and the Battle for Second Amendment Rights.” This program will feature presentations by Independent Institute Research Fellow Stephen P. Halbrook and Nelson Lund (Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law, George Mason University). To be moderated by our Research Director Alexander Tabarrok, the program will also be covered by C-SPAN, and we will be featuring Dr. Halbrook’s widely acclaimed and authoritative book on the issues directly pertinent to the McDonald case, Securing Civil Rights: Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms.