David Friedman examines John Lott’s claims that safe storage laws were to blame for the deaths in the Merced pitchfork murders, and comes to similar conclusions to me: Putting it all together, I conclude that the Merced murders provide evidence against gun control laws, but weaker evidence than John Lott (and Vin Suprynowicz, from whom…

In his book The Seven Myths of Gun Control, Richard Poe has an extensive account of the murders. He is much more careful with his facts than the other pro-gun writers who hang an attack on safe storage laws on the tragedy. He interviewed the mother of the victims and contradicts claims claims by Suprynowicz…

Lott has blogged for the third time about the Merced murders: Taken together, the different articles in these various posts indicate that the gun was locked; it was placed in a way that was not accessible by the children; both the father and the great-uncle, the Rev. John Hilton, believed that if the gun had…

Lott has a new entry on his blog where he posts a transcript from Fox News that apparently has the father of the murdered children saying: “If a gun would have been here today, I’d have at least a daughter alive.” I was mistaken when I suggested that the quote was a fabrication. The quote…

Lott has started a blog and responded to the questions I raised about his claims about the Merced pitchfork murders: Fox News interviewed the father of the dead children and reported the following: “Lott cited a Merced, Calif. family whose guns were put away because of the state’s safe storage law. John Carpenter, who lost…

I found a copy of the Fresno Bee story that Lott claimed “included the fact that while he was breaking in the eldest child, a fourteen year old girl with experience in target shooting, went to her parents’ bedroom, got out their handgun—and was unable to use it because of the trigger lock that her…

In chapter 7 of The Bias Against Guns, where Lott argues that “safe storage” laws cause increases in violent crime, he quotes from an op-ed: Jessica Lynne Carpenter is 14 years old. She knows how to shoot … Under the new “safe storage” laws being enacted in California and elsewhere, parents can be held criminally…