COMMENT ON THE RECENT WORK OF KWON, SCOTT, SAFRANSKI, AND BAE - NO, YOUR EVIDENCE DOESNT PROVE WHAT YOU THINK IT DOES

In the January 1997 issue of The American Journal of Economics and Soc iology, Professors Ik-Whan Kwon, Bradley Scott, Scott R. Safranski and Muen Bae reported in their article ''The Effectiveness of Gun Control Laws: Multivariate Statistical Analysis,'' certain startling results. They claimed that a certain set of cross sectional data that were pub lished in Time (''Beyond the Brady,'' 1993) magazine supported the cla im that gun control laws have only ''mild effect on the number of gun related deaths'' (p. 41). I claim that their study is seriously marred by methodological problems and that no statistically significant and negative relationship between gun control laws and firearm related dea ths can be found in this data set.