(GunReports.com) — Writing in the Wall Street Journal, author and economist John R. Lott Jr. took on recent statements by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Lott quotes Bloomberg, who called “on police to join him in fighting for more gun control: “I don’t understand why the police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say we’re going to go on strike.” Lott pointed out that it is illegal for police to go on strike, and Bloomberg later backed off his statement. Then Lott wrote, “But the mayor is just as far off the mark in his assumption that police agree with him on gun control.”
Lott points out that a 2010 survey by the National Association of Chiefs of Police (20,000 chiefs of police and sheriffs) found that 95% believed “any law-abiding citizen [should] be able to purchase a firearm for sport or self-defense.”
Seventy-seven percent believed that concealed-handgun permits issued in one state should be honored by other states “in the way that drivers’ licenses are recognized through the country”—and that making citizens’ permits portable would “facilitate the violent crime-fighting potential of the professional law enforcement community.”
Lott also points to a 2007 national survey of sworn police officers by Police Magazine. That survey found that 88% disagreed that “tighter restrictions on handgun ownership would increase or enhance public safety.”
In the same survey, 67% opposed tighter gun control because the “law would only be obeyed by law-abiding citizens.”
Lott also says, “Mr. Bloomberg’s claims about guns are mere hypotheticals, apparently based on guesses and little knowledge of what happens in real life. He also uses inaccurate, scaremongering terminology that suggests he doesn’t even understand how guns operate.”
To read the rest of the WSJ report, click here.