Another Review of Freedomnomics

“Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t,” reads the subtitle on the dust jacket.
So what? And what does that have to do with gun rights?

Like the saying goes, it’s not about guns, it’s about freedom. And Freedomnomics, by economist and author John Lott, Jr., does much to illustrate the relationship between free markets and liberty.

Sure, he builds on the groundbreaking work that established his name as a world-renowned commentator in More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns. But some of his conclusions go against what is intuitively accepted as common knowledge.

For instance, many believe legalized abortion has reduced violent crime by removing the most unwanted and therefore potentially crime-prone from the population. Lott has the numbers to show an increase in “the murder rate, on average, by about 7 percent.”

Likewise, affirmative action programs for police forces have the effect of lowering their effectiveness by lowering standards. “Ironically,” Lott writes, the people this hurts the most are those who live in “places already plagued by terrible crime.”

This is controversial stuff to some, hardly politically correct. But Lott proceeds unfazed, taking on capital punishment and demonstrating “the death penalty helps deter violent crime and save lives,” and when “there were no executions … between 1968 and 1976 … murder rates skyrocketed.” . . .