John Lott on Christie's Veto of NJ Magazine and Gun Ban Bill

John Lott had this op/ed over the weekend in The New Jersey Star-Ledger explaining that N.J. Governor Chris Christie's reasons for vetoing the magazine/gun ban bill were sound and on target:

But there is a reason that gun control supporters, such as Malloy, don’t provide evidence that Christie is factually in the wrong. There have been plenty of studies on assault weapon bans by criminologists and economists alike, but there isn’t any evidence that limiting magazine size helps fight crime.

Take the work of two criminology professors, Chris Koper and Jeff Roth. They were hired by the Clinton administration to evaluate the original assault weapons ban, which limited magazines to 10 bullets. They found: “the evidence is not strong enough for us to conclude that there was any meaningful effect (i.e., that the effect was different from zero).”

At the time, Koper and Roth suggested that after the ban had been in effect for more years, it might be possible to find a benefit. Seven years later, in 2004, they published a follow-up study for the National Institute of Justice with fellow criminologist Dan Woods that concluded, “we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”

Even a bureau of the U.S. Department of Justice included Lott's article in their news clips for the day.

At least they don't completely dismiss the other side of the gun control debate as completely out of hand.