Focusing on his research in domestic violence and gun control, Fels Center of Government Director Lawrence Sherman addressed more than 70 students last Monday at the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. Sherman, who is also a human relations professor, told the packed audience that his findings on often-controversial topics are not always well received -- an any researcher should be prepared for such a response. "When you come up with findings that people don't want to hear, you should be prepared to have people denounce your research methods, your parentage or anything else that they can denounce to try to change the subject," Sherman said, recounting the opposition to his domestic violence research. At the time, Sherman was investigating laws that mandated the arrest of men who abused their wives after the first offense. He found that this reduced the rate of repeat offenses in wealthy suburban households but increased the rate in poor inner-city households. "I [went] on the Today show and had debates with the state senator from Milwaukee who was pushing the mandatory arrest law, and who had 10 different reasons why this study shouldn't be believed," Sherman said. "But we then got the data from [four other cities] and we found the same pattern." Sherman also discussed his research on gun violence and gun control. "[Research] has fairly consistently shown that if you can increase enforcement for carrying concealed weapons in public places, then gun violence goes down," Sherman said. "Nationally, that is what happened throughout the '90s; it is one of a long list of hypotheses about why gun crime has dropped in this country by about 25 percent over the past 10 years... I was glad to be involved in [it] while the heat sort of settled down on the domestic violence issue." Sherman stressed the importance of relying on data rather than the emotions that certain proposals engender. He cited the example of gun buyback programs, which -- despite their popularity among some politicians -- have been shown to have no effect on crime rates. Sherman also addressed an audience member's question about the recent trend of school violence. "The problem with school violence... is that it's a needle in a haystack," Sherman said. "Over the last 10 years, the number of people killed in schools has actually been declining steadily. In fact, kids are safer -- they're 88 times less likely to be killed in school than out of school." Hope Lozano, a College junior, said she was impressed with Sherman's talk. "I knew that he was doing some provocative research," Lozano said. "He has a charisma about him, and I can tell that he has vision, which is rare." Following the lecture, CURF Director Art Casciato commended Sherman on his clear communication. "I think Larry's talk was a model of what we're looking for here," Casciato said. "Taking that kind of autobiographical, narrative approach to his presentation made it much more accessible to the very broad audience that we had here today. It helps to humanize what all scholars do."
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