One of the most frequent criticisms of literature favouring gun control is that it is often written with a pre-conceived agenda. Evidence which would tend to lend weight to the argument is promoted, whilst contradictory evidence is suppressed. These are typical propaganda techniques.

A very short list of flawed research

• Killias
• Kellerman a junk research factory.
• Altbeker Analysis of Altbekers flawed report by Richard Wesson.
  Crimefree comment on Altbeker - Are South Africans responsible firearm owners?
• McKenzie
• Gabor
• University of Maryland

In 1978 the Carter Administration's National Institute of Justice funded a complete review of extant social scientific literature on guns, to be done by the University of Massachusetts' Social and Demographic Research Center. This encyclopedic work set the benchmark and point of departure for all later research in the field. Begun with the expectation of ratifying the anti-gun views its senior authors admittedly shared, it ended instead with an almost unrelentingly negative evaluation of the entire corpus of gun control literature. Though not as yet reflected in the POST and other popular literature, current scholarly appraisals are epitomized by the sorrowful comment of Duke University's Philip J. Cook, co-author of a Ford Foundation study of gun control, in an unpublished 1976 paper:

While the consistent failure of gun control proposals to pass Congress has often been blamed on lobbying efforts of the NRA, part of the problem may be that the case for more stringent gun control regulation has not been made in any scientific fashion. -- Firearms and Violent Crime: Old Premises, Current Evidence, Don B. Kates Jr.

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