New gun laws would hurt “poor blacks who live in high crime neighborhoods” the most
I don’t believe I’ve done this, before. With the possible exception of Erich Pratt’s (formerly Larry Pratt’s) Gun Owners of America ( https://gunowners.org/about-goa/ ), John Lott, Ph.D. in economics from UCLA, author of “More Guns Less Crime” and “The Bias Against Guns,” seems to stand almost alone, these days, in offering calm, evidence-based rebuttals to the artificially driven panic for even more counterproductive, unconstitutional “gun control” (always promoted as “common-sense”, of course . . . while based on provable lies, without mentioning what a total failure their previous 20,000 “common-sense gun control” laws have been.)
Our friend Dr. Lott recently sent me an update on what he’s been up to, which of course includes a request for donations, down at the bottom. Here are some excerpts. I have no financial interest in his operation, I have neither requested nor will I receive any “cut.” Provided for the information of those who may wonder if ANYONE remains a calm voice for liberty and the right to self-defense:
John writes: Dear Vin —
Things look pretty bad. I have never seen the Senate and House so likely to pass some terrible gun control laws.
The reason is pretty simple: we have not been able to inform people about the truth. A couple of days ago, after I finished a television show at Sinclair Broadcasting, I talked to a group of six young women reporters. One of the women summarized the gun control debate this way: while one side of the gun debate wants to use background checks to stop criminals from getting guns, the other side wants to be able to sell guns to whomever they want. All the other women nodded their heads in agreement.
I explained that everyone wants to stop criminals from getting guns, but that universal background checks will prevent a lot of law-abiding people from being able to defend themselves and their families — that it will be the most vulnerable, poor blacks who live in high crime neighborhoods, who will be hurt the most. I pointed out that in next door DC it costs $125 to privately transfer a gun, that virtually everyone stopped from buying a gun because of a background check is a mistake. But none of them had ever heard my arguments before, and in fact, my points were so different from everything that they had ever heard they had a hard time believing that they were correct.
These bills are fixable, though my guess is that gun control advocates will block even the most reasonable reforms. If you believe background checks reduce crime (and I don’t), it reduces crime for everyone. If everyone benefits, everyone should pay. But the same Democrats who complain about free voter IDs have no problem with $125 fees for background checks. As far as the mistakes in the background check system, the false positives, all you have to do is have the government meet the same regulations for doing background checks that the federal government demands of private companies when they do background checks on employees.
It isn’t just these reporters. This past week National Review has had at least nine articles supporting various gun control laws. They advocated everything from universal background checks to Red Flag laws.
Facing even “conservatives” talking about “reasonable” gun control laws and not understanding the problems created by these laws, the battle to educate people over the next month is going to be very tough.
I discussed these and other misconceptions that people have in a talk that C-SPAN carried recently. The video is available here —
https://crimeresearch.org/2019/07/on-c-span-to-talk-about-gun-control-myths/ — and I think that it turned out really well.
This past week has been very busy, and this email blast only has a small portion of the media that I have done. One interview with Mark Levin — https://crimeresearch.org/2019/08/on-the-mark-levin-show-to-discuss-an-assault-weapon-ban-universal-background-checks-and-red-flag-laws/ — goes through the three main gun control proposals very succinctly. After the Gilroy shooting, I was on Jim Bohannon’s national radio show —
https://crimeresearch.org/2019/08/27190/ — to discuss the dangers of gun-free zones, and how virtually all these attacks take place where guns are banned.
It is amazing how the media gets away with calling these killers “right-wingers” who agree with President Trump when they are environmentalists — https://crimeresearch.org/2019/08/at-townhall-com-heres-something-you-wont-hear-about-on-the-shootings/ — who hate immigration because having more people in the country will damage the environment. The Dayton killer was a self identified “leftist” who was a gun control advocate:
https://crimeresearch.org/2019/08/dayton-ohio-shooter-is-a-registered-democrat/
In several interviews on Canada’s CTV, I was able to explain what policies might really work to stop these mass public shootings.
If you want an amusing interview, I did a hostile radio interview in the UK: https://crimeresearch.org/2019/08/the-uk-lbc-talk-radio-explosive-row-with-gun-advocate-over-argument-to-increase-firearm-ownership/ .
Here are some quotes from this past week:
Mark Levin: “John Lott, who is indispensable in times like these. . . This man is an encyclopedia, he is brilliant and he is wonderful.”
Judge Andrew Napolitano: “John Lott is the best that there is.”
But we need help getting this message out. We need to do it now while we can influence the debate. The media is very resistant to letting people know these facts. I don’t normally ask you for this help. I can put in the hours, but we need your support to get people to learn about what we do. Please go here, anything from $25, $50, $100, $200, $1,000, even $5,000 is crucial. Please help:
For information on activities at the Crime Prevention Research Center, here is a link to our “info deck”: https://prezi.com/6baszjujoz1m/copy-of-crime-prevention-research-center/?utm_campaign=share&token=8d719e81e25367d2d082be58bef5447958e264875a56168924631f265681d366&utm_medium=copy
(Sorry, the link didn’t work last time we sent it out, but it should now.) Please view in full-screen mode and scroll using the arrow buttons at the bottom of the screen.
If you have any friends who you think might find our emails of interest, please encourage them to sign up by sending them the link here:
John R. Lott, Jr.
President
Crime Prevention Research Center
http://crimeresearch.org
Crime Prevention Research Center · 3682 KING St, P.O. Box 3243, Alexandria, VA 22302-9998
