The Daily Signal - #420: The Facts About Gun Control and Homicide Rates

Episode Date: March 18, 2019

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. 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 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. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, March 19th. I'm Kate Trincoe. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, New Zealanders are handing in their guns in the wake of a mass shooting, but will that help? And would getting rid of guns here in America have any effect on crime and violence? At CPAC, Kate spoke about that with John Lott, an expert on guns and crime prevention. We'll bring you that interview. Plus, Chelsea Clinton, of all people, gets blamed for the mass shooting.

We'll unpack what that's about. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating on iTunes, and please encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. On Monday, a gunman opened fire on a tram in Utrecht, Netherlands, killing three people and wounding five. Authorities have arrested the shooter, 37-year-old Gokman-Tanis, who was born in Turkey. The Prime Minister said terror motives were being investigated. The gunman's family, though, said that he shot a relative as part of the person.

part of a family dispute, and then shot others who tried to help that person. Police said he had a criminal record, but wouldn't elaborate further. The shooting comes just three days after a deadly shooting at a New Zealand mosque. There was no immediate indication of whether those two shootings were related. As New Zealand still reels from the horrible attack on two mosques that left 50 dead, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardum said Monday, within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism, we will have announced reforms, which will, I believe, may be.

our community safer. Shortly after the attack, Arden had said she intended to change gun laws. I'm advised that there were five guns used by the primary perpetrator. There were two semi-automatic weapons and two shotguns. The offender was in possession of a gun license. I'm advised that this was acquired in November of 2017. A lever action firearm was also found. while work has been done as to the chain of events that led to both the holding of this gun license and the possession of these weapons, I can tell you one thing right now. Our gun laws will change. There have been attempts to change our laws in 2005, 2012, and after an inquiry in 2017.

Now is the time for change. Trump is still going after John McCain. In a series of weekend tweets, the president blasted the late senator for his role in a dossier, which contains unverified claims about Trump's ties to Russia. The president accused McCain of spreading the dossier, and he quoted Ken Starr, who in a Saturday interview with Fox News said that McCain's decision to share the dossier with the FBI was a, quote, very dark stain against him. The president then said, quote, he had far worse stains than this, including

thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace, end quote. The president there referring to McCain's decisive vote which sunk a Republican health care bill. Later in the weekend, the president tweeted that McCain was last in his class at the Naval Academy. McCain's daughter, Megan McCain, shot back at the president on the view. Listen, he spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he knows it and I know it and all of you know it. He will never be a great man. No. And so my father was his kryptonite in life.

He's his kryptonite in death. On a personal level, I agree with you. All of us have love and families. And when my father was alive up until adulthood, we would spend our time together, cooking, hiking, fishing, really celebrating life. And I think it's because he almost died. And I just thought, your life is spent on your weekends,

not with your family, not with your friends, but obsessing. obsessing over great men you could never live up to. That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now. I genuinely feel bad for his family. Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, says he won't support the current version of the Equality Act, which is a top priority for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

and would make it illegal to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, but is so broad that it could mean it could be illegal for someone. someone not to use someone's preferred pronoun, and it could require schools to let transgender women play women's sports no matter their physical advantage. Mansion said in a statement Monday, after speaking with local education officials in West Virginia, I am not convinced that the Equality Act as written provides sufficient guidance to the local officials who will be responsible for implementing it, particularly with respect to students transitioning between genders in public schools.

I will continue working with the sponsors of the bill to build broad bipartisan support and find a viable path forward for these critical protections so that I can vote in support of this bill. Well, former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke came within three points of beating Ted Cruz last fall in a closely watched Senate race. It turns out now that Reuters held a major story about O'Rourke until after the election. Details emerged Friday when Reuters finally reported that O'Rourke was part of a computer. Hacking Group, as a teenager, called Cult of the Dead Cow, and that he authored a series of writings under the pseudonym Psychedelic Warlord. Joseph Men, the reporter, said he found out that a sitting member of Congress had been a member of the hacking group last year while he was doing

research for a book on the subject. He said members of the group shared details with him only on the condition that he not published them until after the Senate race. He held the story for over a year. The Reuters report also revealed O'Rourke wrote disturbing fiction under his pseudonym, which included the murder of children. He soon issued an apology for these writings, saying that he was now mortified and embarrassed to read them. Delaware may have a measly three electoral college votes, but the first state in the nation is looking to join 12 states in Washington, D.C., and give its electoral college votes to the popular vote winner, not the state's winner. A measure proposing just that passed the State House last week, and according to local radio station, W-H-Y-Y-Y, the governor,

John Carney, said he was on board to sign it. Up next, Kate's interview from CPAC with John Lott, a gun and crime expert. Want to get up to speed about the Supreme Court? Then subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a podcast about everything that's happening at the Supreme Court and what the justices are up to. Okay, another interview from CPAC. I'm Kate Trinko. We're here with John Lott, who is with the Crime Prevention Revenue.

Center and I understand there's a website where people can also check out your work. Yeah, crime research.org. Okay, well first off, let's start. House Democrats just passed another gun control bill. John, what should we think about this? Well, these are bills related to background checks. Everybody wants to stop criminals from getting guns. The problem with these rules is that they're much more likely or they do stop law-bying

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. And 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. You know, just 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, which it's the person you're doing the background check on it. 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'd be like, you know, $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-biting people. go and have guns for self-defense. And it's basically rules that will make it so that poor, particularly minorities, are going to be, find it difficult to have guns to defend themselves and their families. Okay. Now, 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? Well, I mean, police are extremely,

important 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 crimes 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 than 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. 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 are relatively weaker physically, and that tends to be women and the elderly. The 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. Okay, and what about, you know, school shootings have been one of the biggest issues when we're discussing gun control. In Baltimore recently, they got rid of armed guards and they brought them back after another shooting in a school. Other districts are considering or have implemented arming teachers. Do you think, how do you think schools should deal with this? Well, we have 20 states that have schools that allow teachers to carry guns right now. So a lot of the kind of hypothetical discussions that people have about arming teachers, we really don't need to guess. We have a lot of information to see how it works out.

Look, I understand the desire to have armed guards, but armed guards have a virtually impossible task in stopping a mass public shooting. If you have somebody in uniform or somebody who's at least readily identifiable as an armed, and they're the only person that's armed, if you're going to have an attack, they're going to be the first person killed, because the killers will know that once they kill that person, they'll essentially have free rein to go and attack others that are there. And so the advantage of having teachers with concealed handguns is that the attackers don't know who it is that they have to worry about.

And it also would make that if you are still going to have armed guards, it makes their job much safer because if they go and attack an armed guard, they reveal their position. and then they have to worry about somebody behind them or to the side, somebody who they don't know whether they're armed or not, might be able to go and stop them at that point. So it really takes away the strategic advantages that these killers currently possess in places where you only have an armed guard or you have nobody that's armed. Yeah, and of course we would really love if some of these shootings could be stopped right away.

It's so awful. We hear a lot from the media about, you know, oh, these other countries have gun control and everything's peaceful and lovely and gun violence is off the charts in the U.S. Is this depiction of the international situation accurate? No, it's not even remotely accurate. We've done research on mass public shootings across the country, across the world, looking at the data from 1998 through 2015. The United States makes about 4.6% of the world population, but we make up only about 1.1% of the mass public shooters over that period of time. So we're way, way below the average that's there. You know, you have many

countries in Europe that have rates of death for mass public shooting that's much higher than the United States. Russia is about 50% higher than we are. You have France and Norway and Finland and Switzerland are major countries, plus that have much higher rates. Of course, you have other countries like Serbia and others in Europe, too, that also have much higher rates than in the United States. You know, many of those countries, like France, has extremely strict gun control laws. Even semi-automatic guns are essentially banned in the country there. You know, usually what happens in international comparisons is people use firearm homicide data.

The problem with firearm homicide data is about half the countries in the world don't report that data. They just report total homicides. And the countries that tend not to report firearm homicides are overwhelmingly the high murder rate countries. And so the United States, if you look at all homicide rates, the United States is well below the average, well below the median. But if you look at firearm homicides, it looks like we're much higher. But that's only because the countries at the top are missing. So it's just the fact that there's a problem with the data, that the data is not complete there, that makes this look relatively higher than it would be otherwise. And there's even developed countries that have high homicide rates that don't report firearm homicides.

Okay. Now, I mean, we see this issue being discussed a lot. You've obviously been an advocate on this issue for a long time. What's your advice to someone who's not an expert in this area when they're discussing it with friends and family who may disagree? Like, how do you think they should pursue it? Well, I mean, I think you need to educate yourself a little bit. I mean, our website atcrimeresearch.org has a lot of information. like I'm talking about here.

But, you know, I think there are a few simple types of questions. You can ask people. If they believe that guns on net cause problems, ask them to point to one country in the world that's banned guns, either all guns or all handguns, and seeing the murder rates stay the same or go down. I can't find a country or a place where that's happened. You know, Americans are familiar with what happened in Chicago and Washington,

in D.C. after we had handgun bans. Now they'll go and they say, well, you don't expect it to work because unless you ban guns, every place in the country, people can still get them from Indiana or Illinois or Maryland or Virginia. The thing is, that doesn't explain why it went up. It may explain why it didn't go down as much as they were predicting it was going to go down. But, you know, you can look at island nations that have banned guns. And what you find, whether it be Jamaica or the Republic of Ireland or the UK, their homicide rates went up significantly, you know, sometimes six, seven-fold increases after they ban guns. And there's a simple reason why that's the case.

And that is when you pass any gun control law, you have to ask yourself who's most likely to obey it. So if I go and ban guns, if I go and ban guns, it's going to basically be the most law-abiding good. people who are going to turn them in, not the criminals. I mean, you may take some guns away from the criminals, but if you primarily disarm long-bodied citizens, you're actually going to make it relatively easier for criminals to go and commit crimes. You know, and people may point to Australia or something. Australia didn't ban guns.

Their firearm homicide and firearm suicide rates were falling for 15 years prior to the buyback that they had in 96 and 97. And it continued falling afterwards, but actually at a much slower rate than it was falling beforehand. So, you know, if anything, it looked like it actually was detrimental to the decline that they were having in those types of rates up until the buyback. And in addition, they didn't ban guns in Australia. What they did was they bought them back. But people after the buyback were allowed to go and buy guns again. and by 2010, the gun ownership rate in Australia

was significantly above where it was prior to the buyback. So it doesn't fit any of their stories. Interesting. You certainly hear the left bring up Australia a lot. Well, John Lott, thank you so much for joining us today. Well, thanks very much. If people want to find more, they can go to our website atcrimeresearch.org. Do you own an Alexa? You can now get the Daily Signal podcast every day as part of your daily flash briefing.

It's easy to do. Just open up your Alexa app, go to settings, and select flash briefing. From there, you can search for the Daily Signal podcast and add it to your flash briefing so you can stay up to date with the top news of the day that the liberal media isn't covering. Now Chelsea Clinton's not woke enough. The former first daughter was confronted at a prayer vigil for the victims of the New Zealand attack. Is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the word that you would put out into the world. And I want you to know that. And I want you to feel that deep inside. 49 people die because of the rhetoric that we put out there.

I don't think. I'm sorry you feel that we mean. What does that mean? Clinton had recently tweeted in response to Representative Ilan Omar's anti-Semitic remarks about Jews allegiance, quote, we should expect all elected officials, regardless of party and all public figures, to not traffic in anti-Semitism. In an essay in Besfeed, the two women who confronted Clinton, one Israeli-American and Jewish and one Muslim Palestinian and both New York University college students wrote,

We did a double take when we first noticed Chelsea Clinton was at the vigil. Just weeks before this tragedy, we bore witness to a bigoted anti-Muslim mob coming after Representative Ilan Omar for speaking the truth about the massive influence of the Israel lobby in this country. As people in unwavering solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and human rights, We were profoundly disappointed when Chelsea Clinton used her platform to fan those flames. We believe that Ilan Omar did nothing wrong except challenge the status quo, but the way many people chose to criticize Omar made her vulnerable to anti-Muslim hatred and death threats. The two women, Rose Asaf and Lean Dwake, added, many have said it was unfair to connect Chelsea's words to the massacre in Christchurch.

And then they also said, spurred on by professional bigots, anti-Muslims. Muslim hate now permeates our culture and politics, and everyone as a matter of urgency should consider the role they play in enabling it. That includes Chelsea Clinton. So Daniel, were you surprised to see Chelsea's now in trouble? I mean, I can't say I'm surprised, but my goodness, like talk about a completely vague and yet horribly serious charge to make against somebody, calling someone responsible. What does opposing anti-Semitism have to do with somehow endorsing what they would consider

Islamophobia. I mean, they're acting as though those things are like, there's a tradeoff between the two. Like you can't be against anti-Semitism without, you know. Or that you can't criticize a Muslim Congresswoman without being anti-Muslim. Right, exactly. And I think

if Omar, if another member of Congress had made the same comments, people would have responded the same way. I don't think the fact that she's Muslim, you know, and where's a hijab and is, you know, attracting all of the, you know, the criticism. I think it's just the anti-Semitism. Yeah, but I think it's sort of interesting because it shows you, I mean, I think where the left is. I mean, this is such an aggressive act.

But, of course, I mean, it also went viral on Twitter, and I don't know if that's because people were stunned, or if that's because people agreed with what happened, or if it was a mixture or what exactly. But I don't know. It was really interesting. I mean, yeah, and it's such an egregious charge compared to. to what Chelsea did. It's not like, you know, it's not like she supported a policy that led to this directly. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, if we're going to go after Chelsea Clinton, they should go after Nancy Pelosi and every Democrat who also, you know, criticized Omar, which is a lot of Democrats.

Yeah, I mean, I guess the lesson is don't show up at prayer vigils for the New Zealand massacre if you don't want to be confronted. Yeah. Also, you know, assuming that, you know, assuming for the sake of argument that Jelsey Clinton, you know, did have, you know, what she said was related to the shooter, which clearly wasn't. Like, I think we need to stop blaming people who say things, you know, you know, mixed statements, blaming them for, like, murder's acts that happened by people who, you know,

maybe took inspiration from what you said. But maybe that, you know, in that particular case, I guess there is such. a thing as inciting violence, right? But sometimes when you make a statement that's kind of vague and open-ended, someone can interpret it a certain way and claim that as motivation to go commit mass murder. And then what are you supposed to do? Right. And I think, you know, this, if Chelsea had done something like, say, you know, I want 50 people murdered in a mosque, then, okay, fine, obviously fair game. But there's a moral difference between that and, you know, making, just making a

random statement. Right. And as you said, there's absolutely no fair way to connect the two. I mean, there's no reason to believe the shooter was at all motivated. There's no reason to believe that she was promoting anti-Muslims sentiments unless she believed that any criticism of Omar is anti-Muslim, which is, I mean, a ludicrous standard. And her statement was openly criticizing, like, racism, but the guy who did the shooting in New Zealand had written like a white supremacist manifesto that was very clearly racist. Yeah. But, but. But I think the broader picture that's more interesting to me is one, you know, we're sort of seeing another example of the left fighting itself. I mean, we have plenty of examples of this on the right.

But, you know, the left, there's definitely this really intense energy. And the other thing that I was going to say was, you know, I think we're beginning to see that the left is realizing not everyone can be a privileged class. And this is sort of an interesting fight. And we are seeing it, you know, in the social issues with them picking transgender people over a lesbian. and other feminists, and now we're seeing that they, I mean, you know, it's a bit broad because these two high, or these two college women are not like the examples of the left, but now we're seeing a struggle to say you can't be both opposed to anti-Semitism and anti-Muslims, like almost like they're acting like those two things are in contradiction to each other.

Right. Like you either have to pick a team. Yeah. They're saying it's a zero-sum game and that these groups, which totally buys into the identity politics, that all we are is just a bunch of tribes, a bunch of groups that have competing interest and when you do anything that in any way serves one group or at least protects them, you're somehow hurting the other groups. Yeah. And also these two women are really permitting the narrative that all, you know, Omar did was criticize Israel, which there are plenty of people

who criticize Israel's political choices. But, you know, Omar used several tropes that went far beyond that. I believe she reportedly has met with people to discuss this in between some of the these incidents, maybe also met with people before she was elected, but was a state representative. You know, like this, it's a little bit bizarre to keep coming out with this stuff if it's not what you believe. Right. Well, we will leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or a five-star rating on iTunes.

Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or a five-star rating on iTunes. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis, sound design by Michael Gooden,

Lauren Evans, and Thalia Ramprasad. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.