John Lott reads Rumsfeld's Mind

[wyethwire]

John Lott responds to his use of Baghdad murder rate statistic that doesn't exist.

His excuse? Donald Rumsfeld must know what he is talking about.

Lott's defenders take up the rallying cry "Just because he cites an imaginary statistic doesn't make him a liar."

Um, okay.

[MrBenchley]

1. Amazing...simply amazing

Lott himself demonstrates better than any counter-argument the utter bankruptcy and dishonesty of the RKBA argument.

[CO Liberal]

2. That's Why Lott Has Been Embraced By The Right Wing

He's praised quite often in columns written by such prominent idiots as Thomas Sowell, Charles Krauthammer, and Mike Rosen.

[MrBenchley]

6. Yup...

Whenever right wing scumbags need a phony "expert" he pops up.

[Emoto]

3. What Lott Actually said

From the link you provided

"So What About Rumsfeld's Claim About the Murder Rates in Washington, DC and Baghdad?

A 6/26 op-ed of mine referenced Rumsfeld's statement that Baghdad's murder rate (despite still mopping up after a war and civilians being able to own high power guns) is greater than Washington, DC's. The sentence in my piece that seems to upset people is that:

"Yet, despite Iraqis owning machine guns and the country still not under control, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointed out that Baghdad is experiencing fewer murders than Washington, D.C., where handguns are banned. "

Other web sites and various e-mails have claimed in typical diplomatic language that "JOHN LOTT LIES AGAIN". Yet, Rumsfeld's statement and logic seems extremely clear;

"'You've got to remember that if Washington, D.C., were the size of Baghdad, we would be having something like 215 murders a month,' Rumsfeld said. 'There's going to be violence in a big city.' "

Baghdad is a city with a population some 8.5 times greater than Washington. While it might be difficult to keep track of the number of property crimes or robberies these days in Iraq, presumably Rumsfeld knows whether the number of murders is greater or less than 200 a month. Given that during 2001 Washington had 261 murders, my math is a little different from Rumsfeld's (185=(261/12)*8.5), but the numbers are of a similar order of magnitude and the point is the same.

Finally, an e-mail suggests that Rumsfeld was referring to the military deaths of our soldiers. I think that is clearly false when one reads Rumsfeld's quote. "

[wyethwire]

4. Why can't John Lott give me a straight answer?

Lott claims the murder rate is higher in DC than in Baghdad.

I know what the DC murder rate is.

Rather than give me another number to compare it with, Lott falls back on mathmatical extrapolations and an assurance that Donald Rumself has the answer. Only he isn't telling anyone.

[whoYaCallinAlib]

5. Lott can mindfuck himself into all kinds of fancy algorithims.

But at the end of the day, too fucking many of our boys are dying and THAT is the message that has to get out.

[DCDemo]

7. The bigger problem is the use of different types of places for comparison

I live in DC and work with Demographics and Geography every day of my life. Let me explain why pretty much ANY statistic about DC should be taken with a large grain of salt.


Look at a map. DC is small, and it is it's own territory, not part of the region around it as it is not in Virginia or Maryland.

Cities have a basic structure of a dense inner residential area, business distric, and then as you radiate out from the dense center, you get suburbs, etc.

Even Baghdad has this basic structure.

If you look at crime, a lot of major crime happens in the dense, usually poorer, inner city. In fact, especially in the case of drugs, people from the suburbs come into the inner city to buy and use. Cri

DC does not include the suburbs. We have a small population - 571,738 in 2002 - surrounded by a few million people in the suburbs.

Crime statistics usually are not reported for the "city center". DC is 61.403 square miles. As in 6x10. That's it, that's all.

We are a small area, with the dense urban area at it's heart, and that is what statistics are reported on.

It is MUCH more logical to compare like geographies. Not just the geographic DC compared to other cities, but the DC Metro Area.


I don't have access to crime data, but I am pretty sure that when you start factoring in the millions of people that live in the DC metro area, the crime rate plummets dramatically.

216 murders out of 571,738 population sounds pretty bad, but if you add in the murders and population of the surrounding area, suddenly it looks a lot more like 400 murders out of 5,070,677 population, which isn't that bad a murder rate at all.

I got really pissed off by Rummy's comments, and even more so today reading what Lott has to say.

Thing is, you can make numbers lie for you quite easily, but if you stop and think and learn about what they are talking about, often the lies dissolve.

If you looked at the murder rate in the Bronx, perhaps you'd find it was higher than Baghdad. But so what? You're not comparing two entire metropolitan areas, so the comparison means nothing.

[wyethwire]

8. At least

He is no longer hiding behind Mary Rosh