New Zealand looks likely to enact gun control measures in wake of the terrorist attack on two mosques. (Photo: iStock/Getty Images Plus)
Are there really fewer homicides in countries with gun control? Are other countries besides the United States dealing with mass shooting? John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center joined The Daily Signal at the Conservative Political Action Conference to share the data about gun use the mainstream media isn’t highlighting. Read the transcript posted below or listen to the interview on the podcast. Plus: We cover how even Chelsea Clinton isn’t woke enough these days.
We also cover these stories:
- New Zealand looks likely to enact gun control measures in wake of the terrorist attack on two mosques.
- Meghan McCain is furious President Donald Trump is still criticizing her father, the late Sen. John McCain.
- Delaware’s House voted to make the state gives its Electoral College votes to the popular vote winner.
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Kate Trinko: I’m Kate Trinko. We’re here with John Lott, who is with the Crime Prevention Research Center, and I understand there is a website where people can also check out your work?
The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution.
Find out more >>
John Lott: Yeah, CrimeResearch.org.
Trinko: House Democrats just passed another gun control bill. John, what should we think about this?
Lott: These are bills related to background checks. Everybody wants to stop criminals from getting guns. The problem with these rules is that … they do stop law-abiding citizens at a much higher rate than they stop criminals.And they make it harder, and more costly, for law-abiding citizens to go and get guns. Also, a number of Americans are going to find themselves unintentionally breaking the law and becoming criminals.So, you know, in Washington, D.C., where we’re at, it costs $125 to privately transfer a gun. Just to give you an example of one of the things that are there, let’s say your grandfather leaves you 10 guns. Well, you just don’t do one background check on the person … Instead, the way the law is written is you’d have to do a separate background check on each of the 10 guns that are there. So, it would be like $1,250 to do the background checks on the 10 guns.You know, it’s just lots of little things like that that just make it clear that their goal isn’t to have the background checks, their goal is to make it costly for law-abiding people to go and have guns for self-defense. And it’s basically rules that would make it so that the poor, particularly minorities, are going to find it difficult to have guns to defend themselves and their families.
Trinko: You’ve done a lot of research over the years about the connection, or lack thereof, between guns and crimes, and overall violence. What are some of the statistics that people should really know about?
Lott: Police are extremely important in stopping crime, but the police can’t be there all the time. The police themselves understand that they virtually always arrive on the crime scene after the crime has occurred. And that raises a real question, what should people do when they’re having to confront a criminal by themselves?And what you find is that by far the safest course of action for people to take is to have a gun. Women, for example, who behave passively, are about 2.4 times more likely to end up being seriously injured than a woman who has a gun to protect herself.It’s particularly two groups of people who benefit the most from having a gun. It’s the people who are most likely victims of violent crime, that overwhelmingly tends to be poor blacks who live in high-crime urban areas, and also people who are relatively weaker physically, and that tends to be women and the elderly.Presence of a gun represents a much bigger relative change in a woman’s ability to go and protect herself than it does for a man.