While Kleck gave Lott's book, overall, positive reviews, in reference to the particular study about guns reducing crimes he said that "more likely the declines in crime coinciding with relaxation of carry laws were largely attributable to other factors not controlled for in the Lott Mustard analysis." (Targeting Guns).
Lott's work, as well as all of the other current research on firearms and crime, was reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences - the most prestigious scientific board in the country - found that "there is no credible evidence that 'right-to-carry' laws, which allow qualified adults to carry concealed handguns, either decrease or increase violent crime." There was conflicting data when it came to murder rates and RTC laws:
The National Academy of Sciences panel that reported on several gun control issues in 2004 looked at Right-To-Carry laws in Chapter 6 and endorsed neither the Lott & Mustard (1997) level and trend models as definite proof nor the Ayres & Donohue (2003) hybrid model as definite refutation of Lott's thesis: the majority of panel concluded that econometrics could not decide the issue, suggesting instead alternate research, such as a survey of felons to determine if RTC changed their behavior. The criminologist on the NAS panel, James Q. Wilson, wrote a dissent from the econometricians' conclusion. Wilson noted in the report that all their estimates on murder rates supported Lott's conclusion on the effect of RTC on murder. The Committee responded that "[w]hile it is true that most of the reported estimates [of the policy on murder rates] are negative, several are positive and many are statistically insignificant."[56] They further noted that the full committee, including Wilson, agreed that there was not convincing evidence that RTC policies had an impact on other kinds of violent crime.
The funny thing about Lott is he seems to be a sneak, which hurts his credibility immediately - at least with me.
Of course you know about his "missing survey" - a survey whose data he cites extensively, yet he says all the data was destroyed in a hard drive crash, all the original papers from the survey went missing, and he can't remember which grad students worked on it (hint: check their thesis or dissertation). But that isn't 'sneaky', that is just 'fishy'. The sneaky part is this:
As part of the dispute surrounding the missing survey, Lott created and used "Mary Rosh" as a fake persona to defend his own works on Usenet and elsewhere. After investigative work by blogger Julian Sanchez, Lott admitted to use of the Rosh persona. Sanchez also pointed out that Lott, posing as Rosh, not only praised his own academic writing, but also called himself "the best professor I ever had".
Some commentators accused Lott of transgressing normal practice, noting that he praised himself while posing as one of his former students, and that "Rosh" was used to post a favorable review of More Guns, Less Crime on Amazon.com. Lott has claimed that the "Rosh" review was written by his son and wife.
"I probably shouldn't have done it—I know I shouldn't have done it—but it's hard to think of any big advantage I got except to be able to comment fictitiously," Lott told the Washington Post in 2003.
There are others who think he is even more deceitful than that and feel that he frequently comments and rates books as alternate identities, including criticizing Kleck's books. see for example:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2003/12/lottonkleck.php
Lott, of course, is an economics professor. Kleck is a criminology professor.
I don't find Kleck personally distasteful, and would be open to reading more things that he has written, I find Lott to be too sneaky to trust.
