JOHN LOTT has posted a lengthy response to the Ayres and Donohue letter I mention below, on his website. “Despite their continuing claims to the press, Ayres and Donohue’s own papers do NOT provide any statistically significant evidence that violent crimes increase. . . . Ayres and Donohue’s tone is extreme, especially in comparison to my language.”

UPDATE: Read this, too. Lott emails:

Given Ayres and Donohue’s claim that “”correcting his errors did eliminate his finding,” one can readily see from the corrected tables and figures that this statement is false. The coefficient estimates do change somewhat, but the basic point is still clear. Whether one uses the types of statistical tests that Ayres and Donohue use for all their regressions or whether you use the the type of methodology that Plassmann argues for because of the truncation issues and the nature of the data being count data, you still get a drop in crime.

I expect that there will be more discussion on this topic.