For some reason The New York Times decided to give a trend piece on concealed carry clothing for the “fashion aware gun owner” prime placement on the front page of today's paper. Shockingly, the Times decided that the piece was not complete without commentary from economist and gun researcher John Lott:

After a campaign by gun rights advocates, 37 states now have ''shall issue'' statutes that require them to provide concealed-carry permits if an applicant meets legal requirements, like not being a felon. (A handful of other states allow the concealed carrying of handguns without a permit). By contrast, in 1984 only 8 states had such statutes, and 15 did not allow handgun carrying at all, said John Lott, a researcher of gun culture who has held teaching or research posts at a number of universities, including the University of Chicago. ...

A majority of states have long allowed the open carrying of handguns, said Mr. Lott, who also provided the data on gun permits. But the reality, said Mr. Lott and other gun experts, is that people do not want to show others that they are carrying a weapon or invite sharp questioning from the police.

It's curious that the Times went to Lott for comment, given that the paper has previously noted that studies of his work “have found serious flaws in his data and methodology.”

Lott first gained fame in the 1990s for his claim that the passage of laws allowing for the concealed carry of handguns causes levels of violent crime to drop -- a claim that hassince been debunked. Lott has since been convincingly alleged to have fabricated data to claim that 98 percent of defensive gun uses don't involve the firing of a weapon, cited data that doesn't exist to claim that the end of the assault weapons ban reduced murders, altered blog posts after the fact to eliminate false claims for which he had been criticized, and invented facts that don't appear in a study he cited, among other instances of fabricated, misrepresented, and sloppy research.

Notably, as the Times noted in 2006, Lott “acknowledged in 2003 using the online pseudonym 'Mary Rosh' for more than three years to attack his critics and praise his own work.”

Was there really no one else the Times could have found to provide data on how many states allowed concealed carry permits in the 1980s? And does the Times truly think that describing Lott as a “researcher of gun culture” is sufficient?