John Lott
John Lott | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Richard Lott Jr. May 8, 1958 |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of California, Los Angeles (BA, MA, PhD) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Economics |
| Institutions | University of Chicago Yale University The Wharton School University of Maryland, College Park American Enterprise Institute |
John Richard Lott Jr. (born May 8, 1958) is an American economist, political commentator, and gun rights advocate. Lott was formerly employed at various academic institutions and at the American Enterprise Institute conservative think tank. He is the former president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, a nonprofit he founded in 2013. He worked in the Office of Justice Programs within the U.S. Department of Justice under the Donald Trump administration from October 2020 to January 2021. Lott holds a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA.
He has written for both academic and popular publications. He has authored books such as More Guns, Less Crime, The Bias Against Guns, and Freedomnomics. He is best known as a gun rights advocate and has argued against restrictions on owning and carrying guns. The New Yorker and The Trace have said "no one has had greater influence" in the scientific debate over firearms while Newsweek referred to Lott as "The Gun Crowd's Guru."