“Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”
Appendix D
By: John Lott

I’ll admit it—I’m not fact-checking this chapter, at least not in the way you might expect. Let me explain:

When I started this project back in late December 2015, my goal was simple: to expose James Fetzer’s latest (at the time) cash-grab—a despicable and downright idiotic book about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting—as 426 pages of pure, uncut nonsense. It’s a goal I’ve largely stuck to, despite occasionally straying to address other absurd “false flag” claims or Sandy Hook conspiracies that didn’t make it into Fetzer’s fever dream of a book.

Now, while the specter of “gun control” looms large throughout Fetzer’s work (right there in the book’s clumsy, paranoid title), this project was never about weighing in on the politics of firearms. That’s well beyond the scope of my work here and, frankly, wouldn’t serve much purpose in this context.

Which brings me to this final chapter. If you haven’t read the book, you’re probably wondering what the hell any of this has to do with anything. As it turns out, these last three-and-a-half pages are nothing more than a reprint of John Lott’s pro-gun article, “Murder and Homicide Rates Before and After Gun Bans” (typo included). It was originally published on Lott’s own Crime Prevention Research Center website—a name that, depending on your perspective, might be considered… generous. Oddly enough, there’s no mention of Adam Lanza, Sandy Hook, or anything remotely tied to the book’s central claims, despite this article being published a full year after the shooting.

Now, here’s where it gets curious. John Lott, controversial though he is, is still a visible and prominent gun rights advocate. So what’s he doing mixed up with James Fetzer and his merry band of denialist lunatics? Did he knowingly align himself with this disgraceful book? Or was this a case of Fetzer playing fast and loose with someone else’s work—again? I couldn’t resist digging further.

I scoured the Crime Prevention Research Center site for any mention of Sandy Hook, finding no evidence that Lott has ever suggested the tragedy was anything but legitimate. His multiple media appearances after the shooting seem to reinforce that. Intrigued, I reached out to him directly for clarification:

I noticed that you are credited as being a contributor to the book “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook” by conspiracy theorist James Fetzer. Your contribution seems to be nothing more than one of your blog entries, copied verbatim. Was this something you explicitly agreed to, knowing the subject matter of the book?

Thanks.

No more than fifteen minutes later, he replied:

And there you have it: in addition to the numerous stolen, copyrighted images scattered throughout this book—at least four instances by my count—James Fetzer has also lifted someone else’s written work for a book he’s hawking for $20 (or $30 if you want his autograph!).

Yikes.

11 Thoughts on “Fact Checking “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”, Appendix D

  1. Steve on April 27, 2016 at 4:26 am said:

    Hoaxers like to say Amazon pulled the book because the government pressured it to pull it or something like that.
    This, the copyright violations, is the real reason. Amazon would have been liable had it continued to sell the book.

    • Shill Murray on April 28, 2016 at 12:59 am said:

      Amazon does have content guidelines and Fetzer’s book is so rancid that there are multiple reasons it could have been removed. He claimed there were no copyright issues whatsoever, but that’s obviously bullshit. Beyond this entire “appendix” that he stole from John Lott, there are a number of photographs that he 100% never purchased a license for. He admitted as much when I e-mailed him about it, hilariously claiming “fair use”.

  2. Dear Murray,

    Again thank you for your work. You’ve achieved something quite profound here. It’s no wonder you feel sick of it – having persevered stoically through a complete travesty of shit and at times I’ve felt unclean just reading it.

    Today my country remembers the 35 people murdered 20 years ago at Port Arthur by a skinny little fucker with Aspergers and an automatic weapon. I first heard the conspiracy theories about this event perhaps 10 years ago. At the time, they were mostly reported as being put up by persons closely associated with the NRA, an organisation that seems to do a lot of hand-wringing about laws enacted so many thousands of miles away in Australia. I still believe there’s merit to the original hypothesis about the NRA and its connections to hoaxes.

    In the lead up to Port Arthur, mass shootings in Australia seemed to becoming common place. Strathfield, Hoddle St, Queen St, Surry Hills and Milperra took the lives of more than 70 people in approximately 10 years – just a mere fraction of what happens each year in the US, but frightening to me, nonetheless. Port Arthur also happened only six weeks following the horrific killing of 16 children and their teacher at Dunblane, Scotland. All of these events were perpetrated by idiots who should never have had access to deadly
    weapons. Dunblane and Port Arthur are now also part of the sickening ‘hoaxer’ repertoire.

    Anyway, the gun laws here aren’t really what the NRA make them out to be. Plenty of people have firearms, both licensed and unlicensed. The fact is that you cannot apply for a firearms license unless you have good reason (and those are fairly broad eg collecting), nor can you get a license as a convicted criminal or someone with a documented history of mental illness. Despite this, there are still plenty of shoot-outs between the ‘good guys’ and the bad. The police have a particular propensity for shooting allegedly crazy people wielding knives. (Mostly) men still kill their families and suicide by gunshot is not uncommon.

    Much of my personal interest I think stems from when I was 14 and my best friend’s dad shot her mum ‘five times in the head and neck’ before killing himself with a 22 shotgun meant for rabbit hunting. Her separation from the life she knew and her siblings was something horrible. Her mother was a beautiful lady (and he was a fucken prick who yelled at me for not drying the cutlery properly).

    At 50 now I feel safer. I’ve sent my kids to school, go to work and eat in cafes without worrying too much about random shooters, which was not possible 20 years ago.

    Finally, it should be noted that while the Port Arthur shooter did not have the courage to take his own life on that day, nobody’s learned anything from him. Apparently he’s now obese, still takes pleasure about what he did, in the prison TV room and acts violently toward staff (according to an anonymous source), see: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/real-horror-behind-the-port-arthur-conspiracy/news-story/e679be04cc84b1977dce216b526986b8

    There’s been no revelation about motive. Nothing to give the families closure or peace. Senseless. Many of them must wish him dead.

    I really hope America can find its way through this gun crisis, but looking at recent political developments, I’m not holding my breath (it is amusing tho).

    But as I look daily through the Network’s posts and publications, my heart goes out to the victims of Sandy Hook and my thoughts are always with their families.

    Best regards to you and the Network Murray.

  3. Schminkles on May 1, 2016 at 7:15 pm said:

    I have a theory that he deliberately inserted copyrighted material. He knew it would be found, and that Amazon would pull it. That’s what he wanted, so he could stamp his feet and spit our his dummy over “OMGZ CENSORSHIPS!”

  4. Shill Murray, you are amazing! I really appreciate your wonderful work! About a month ago I wrote about the copyright violations in Fetzer’s book. I just edited that article to include the information that you have provided about Appendix D. The article is at https://screeningsandyhook.net/2016/04/05/censorship-or-copyright-violations/

    • Shill Murray on May 4, 2016 at 1:58 pm said:

      Thanks, Deanna. Same to you. The Sandy Hook research you’ve done on your site is excellent and your takedown of Sofia Smallstorm’s videos in particular really helped to inspire me when I was initially on the fence about starting this project.

  5. Luce Anders on May 4, 2016 at 4:35 pm said:

    Maybe you have something here, but your language is pretty Alinsky-esque: “serial huckster”, “money-making scheme”, “stupid”, “despicable”, “pure, uncut horseshit”. There’s nothing like ridiculing somebody to take them down.

    • Shill Murray on May 4, 2016 at 5:11 pm said:

      Man’s most potent weapon.

      I’m not sure if your comment was meant as a criticism or what, but I’m okay with it either way. There are a lot of other sources out there who have chosen a much more clinical approach and avoid such uh, “colorful” language, but that’s obviously not my style. If someone wants to attack my vocabulary rather than the actual content of the site, I think it says more about them than it does me.

      Also, dreaming up phrases like “waterlogged buttplug” makes me laugh, and you need all the laughs you can get when you’re dealing with material like this.

  6. I have thought a lot about the blatant copyright violations and the probability that it was deliberate so that Fetzer could play the victim card. This is the exact same thing that James Tracy and Wolfgang Halbig have done. Actually, James Tracy seems to be Fetzer’s understudy while Halbig is a long-time con man ready to exploit any situation. This shift of focus (operatives claiming victimhood), serves to take the attention off of the real victims. Given the number of books that Mike Palecek and James Fetzer have each published, I find it extremely hard to believe that they were unaware of the obligations and responsibilities regarding copyright issues. I think the very clever collaboration between Anderson Cooper (CIA/CNN) and his promotion of James Tracy very interesting. That obvious publicity/marketing scheme breached the gap between the so-called truth movement and mainstream broadcasting. Thus more naive people who would never have conceived the idea that Sandy Hook was a hoax were introduced to that ridiculous concept, despite substantial evidence, and then believed the lunatic ideas of Fetzer and his cronies. Many people fail to critically evaluate data and merely accept what others tell them, especially if it is conspiratorial. The real question is – why has there not been any lawsuits against Fetzer that we know of? What entity is protecting him? The average citizen could never/would never pull off a stunt like Fetzer did and get away with it. Consider all of air time and publicity that he has received during which he has played the victim and yelled censorship. That actually gives him street credibility. What entity benefited by this huge shift of focus?

    • Shill Murray on June 6, 2016 at 6:32 pm said:

      I actually e-mailed James and asked him for proof that he had purchased licenses for the many copyrighted images in his book. He ignored my first e-mail but replied to my second, laughably claiming “fair use”. Fair use of copyrighted images in a commercial product? This guy’s ignorance and arrogance truly knows no bounds.

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