So as I’d suspected might happen if John Lott’s claims were true, the Internet hubbub about his 1997 survey has prompted someone to come forward. We have what looks like confirmation that such a survey was, in fact, conducted. A person whose name and other identifying details I’ll omit for privacy’s sake wrote Lott:

This morning, I became aware of a controversy over whether or not you had caused a survey to be conducted concerning the use of firearms. I believe that I can help to shed some light on this issue, because I believe I was one of the respondents. [ … ] In my responses to the survey question concerning the defensive use of a firearm I related that I had had two occasions to do so, once in my home in March of 1980 and once in a public place [ … ] I have answered only one such survey, which I recall as brief and to-the-point; and I initially had some reticence in discussing such matters over the phone. Both of these incidents are matters of record [ … ]

From that, and some other information provided, Lott concludes:

1) He said that the survey was very short and was finished in a couple of minutes. None of the other surveys were short. The shortest other survey asked about 70 questions and would have taken a much longer time to complete.

2) My survey was the only one done by students. He says that he remembers something about Chicago and possibly the student saying that he was from the University of Northwestern. (This last point was possible.)

3) My survey was the only one that had a Chicago connection.

4) My survey was the only one that I know of occurring at that time.

That is, prima facie, pretty good evidence that some such study was done, and if nobody else was doing one at the time, we should probably presume it was Lott’s.

Update: James Lindgren thinks so too. He writes:

The bottom line is that I found [this person] credible. Overall, this is the direct evidence that I had been seeking from the beginning and that I always said had to be out there if a study had been done. I offered to act as an honest broker between Lott and his critics and seek out evidence that would tend to support the existence of the 1997 study if it could be found, and, in that capacity, I said that all trace of a national study does not just disappear because a computer crashes. Well, it doesn’t. For any large study actually done, I believed that someone would eventually come forward, though I expected it to be on the asking rather than the answering side.