John Lott Jr.: Gun Restrictions in High-Crime Areas Don’t Work

Gun restrictions most harm the poor in high-crime urban areas by restricting their access to adequate means of self-defense, economist and gun rights advocate John Lott, Jr. tells Newsmax TV.

“The people who are most likely to be victims of violent crime are going to be priced out of being able to afford guns for self-defense,” Lott tells Newsmax in response to questions about Connecticut’s proposed gun laws.

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“I’m sure in Connecticut, as we’ve seen in Maryland and Colorado and other places, Democrats are going to vote very strongly against exempting poor people from having to pay those taxes.”

Lawmakers in that state want to limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds, require registration of existing high-capacity magazines, require background checks for all firearms purchases, and create a dangerous weapon offender registry.

Lott says these laws don’t do any good. “It’s not stopping criminals; it’s not stopping others from going and getting guns, he said, citing research that he details in his book “At the Brink: Will Obama Push Us Over the Edge?”

An alarmingly high rate of “false positives” during background checks hinder law-abiding citizens from getting permits, he said.

Lott is critical of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s push to ban certain guns deemed “asault-style weapons.”

“They want to go after guns based on how they look,” not on their function, he tells Newsmax. Rather than listing guns she would ban by certain characteristics, Feinstein instead includes a 108-page list of specific weapons.

“The mere fact that you have to list guns by name shows how arbitrary these rules are,” Lott said. “None of these are machine guns they’re talking about.”

In fact, he said, the AR-15 that was used in the Sandy Hook school shooting is functionally identical to any semi-automatic hunting rifle. “It fires the same bullets with the same rapidity doing the same damage.”

So why don’t Democrats just seek to ban all semi-automatic weapons?

Because they know they’d fail, Lott said. People want the ability to defend themselves with weapons that fire every time the trigger is pulled, he said.

“The alternative would be something like a bolt-action rifle, where you have to manually go and load the bullet in the chamber each time, he tells Newsmax. “That takes a lot of time, and when you’re facing multiple criminal attackers people don’t have time.”

One of Lott’s big worries is the danger of public places either advertising they are gun-free, or are guarded only by uniformed security. Such a move only encourages attackers to hit them – or to shoot the uniformed guard.

“It actually serves as a magnet for these attacks,” he said.

The Aurora, Colo.-shooter had visited movie theaters near his house before deciding on which one to strike. It wasn’t the one with the largest auditorium in the state. Nor was it the one nearest his home. It was the one with a sign stating that concealed handguns were banned from the premises.

“These killers try to take places where they know victims aren’t going to be able to defend themselves because then they can go and kill more people and injure more people than they could otherwise,” he said.