Economist John Lott, noted for his academic advocacy of gun rights, says that when Barack Obama was his colleague at the University of Chicago, the future president treated him as if he were “evil.”

Lott relates his interactions with Obama in his new book, co-authored with Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist, “Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We can Do Now to Regain Our Future.”

“The book relates a couple out of the dozen-and-a-half conversations that I had with him,” Lott told The Daily Caller. ”But they were all very short, cut off by Obama turning his back on me and walking away.”

“He wouldn’t shake hands. It was very clear that Obama disagreed on the gun issue and acted as if he believed that people who he disagreed with were not just wrong, but evil. Unlike other liberal academics who usually enjoyed discussing opposing ideas, Obama simply showed disdain.”

Lott and Obama were colleagues at the University of Chicago Law School in the 1990s.

The book’s main focus is Obama’s economic policies, which the authors contend have exacerbated America’s economic woes.

“We wanted to put together a book that explained how the stimulus [the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009] made the economy worse, provide evidence for that claim, and explain what could be done to increase growth,” said Lott, a Fox News contributor who has held teaching and research positions at elite universities including Yale and Stanford.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/08/gun-rights-advocate-and-former-obama-colleague-president-used-to-treat-him-as-evil/#ixzz1rXJiVTes