On the One America News Network to discuss racial discrimination problems caused by the gun background check system

The One America News Network, which is the fourth largest cable news network and has greater viewership than Fox Business News and Bloomberg TV, interviewed me about the problems with the gun background check system.

To many Americans, gun background checks may sound like a good idea, but some conservatives are raising new criticisms of them because they don’t always work as they are supposed to. 

“The background check system we have is a mess in many ways. But one of the big problems is that it is racist in terms of who is stopped. Has a disproportionate impact on blacks and Hispanics from being able to own and buy guns,” states John Lott, President, Crime Prevention Research Center. 

Lott points out that the impact of background checks results because of mistakes based on similar names within racial groups. 

“About thirty percent of black males in the United States are legally forbidden from owning a gun, because of past criminal behavior. Well, what that means is a lot of good, black males who may want to buy a gun to protect him and his family may be more likely to have a name similar to the 30 percent of black males who are legally prohibited from buying a gun,” Lott explains. 

Of course being prohibited from buying a gun can be corrected through an appeals process, but that’s become more difficult in the Obama Administration, says Lott. 

“But what’s happened under President Obama is that they have removed the government employees who used to check to see where the mistakes were made. Nobody’s doing that now. Now you can appeal, but most people are gonna find it’s necessary to hire a lawyer for the appeals process…. Middle income and poor blacks and Hispanics are unlikely to spend the thousands of dollars necessary to fix the mistakes that the government has made,” Lott notes. . . .

The entire article is available here.