Words by John Lott, Re-posted from www.crimeresearch.org
Editor’s Note: Just after AmmoLand News broke the story that Katie Couric edited pro gun group VCDL’s comments to fit her new anti gun hit piece, we now find out that Couric also left out four hours of interviews with gun research expert, John Lott.
USA – -(Ammoland.com)- After over two hours of pre-interviews with Kristin Lazure, a Producer at Atlas Films, I was asked to travel to New York City to do an interview with Katie Couric for her new movie.
As Kristin put it on July 14, 2015: “we are still very much interested in interviewing you to give the film greater balance.”
During the pre-interviews, multiple times Kristin told me how much she appreciated my research and how important it was. Our interview in New York City was only supposed to last an hour, but ended up lasting almost 4 hours.
Yet, none of the interview that I did was included in the movie.
Reviews of movie, such as one by Robert VerBruggen, noted the imbalance. The subheading of VerBruggen’s piece read: “documentary crosses the line from raising questions to avoiding dissent.”
“Lois Beckett with the Guardian (UK) newspaper raised this question:
Beckett: Most of the experts in your film are very strongly tilted towards gun control. Did you try to hear from researchers or experts who aren’t gun control advocates, who are more on the gun rights side?
Director Stephanie Soechtig: We spoke to Richard Feldman, who is a former lobbyist for the NRA.
We spoke to John Lott; he will be featured in a digital companion that we have. We did a great piece on him. He’s the originator of the idea that more guns equal less crime. His research has been criticized and largely discredited, and when we went to include it in the film, it felt like unnecessary real estate to put in the film, because we know his research has been debunked many times. We kept going back to the idea that we wanted to reserve the real estate in the film for the responsible gun owners. . . .”
Richard Feldman is listed as the one person who supports gun rights, but he is a strong gun control advocate. Calling him a “former lobbyist for the NRA” doesn’t mean that in the current discussion he provides balance.
Here is an interview that I did that explains in detail what happened. Wednesday, May, 18, 2016 from 6:00 to 6:08 PM.
About Crime Prevention Research Center:
The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) is a research and education organization dedicated to conducting academic quality research on the relationship between laws regulating the ownership or use of guns, crime, and public safety; educating the public on the results of such research; and supporting other organizations, projects, and initiatives that are organized and operated for similar purposes.
I have considerable background in statistical analysis and I have read all of Dr. Lott’s books and many articles of his as well. I am aware of NO ONE who has “debunked” successfully “discredited” ANY of his work. Many anti-gun folks have CRITICISED his work, because they don’t like the implications of his results, but no one has yet leveled a significant technical critique with any statistical merit at his work. He is somewhat unique in that he is the only researcher I know of who makes his raw dataset readily available to other researchers, including potential critics. Hardly the… Read more »
Liar and part of the leftwing Yahoo propaganda machine!!!
Katie is just another member of our Pravda West Media with a Left-Wing agenda….
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Stalin would be so PROUD !!!!
Again, the media uses Freedom of the Press to report their opinion. I believe in Freedom of Speech, but they should not be able to use it to promote their liberial way of thinking.
Katie just killed her career.
You cannot talk to the liberal media. You cannot do it. They will twist and distort words and phrases every time and where that does not work, they will simply omit the words altogether. It doesn’t matter how smart, well-researched, coherent, logical, or honorable your position is. If it doesn’t match their agenda, it will never see the light of day.