Gun control is often sold as a way to protect vulnerable communities. But according to John Lott, the data shows the opposite.
Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), recently appeared on “Stu Does America” on The Blaze Podcast Network to discuss his latest article published at The Federalist. His core argument: modern gun control policies disproportionately harm minorities, women, and low-income Americans. The very groups politicians claim to be helping.
The discussion centered on recent Department of Justice lawsuits challenging restrictive gun laws, with critics arguing such cases fall outside the Civil Rights Division’s mission. Lott disagrees.
“These are exactly the types of people civil rights laws are supposed to protect,” he explained, pointing out that gun control policies routinely raise costs and create bureaucratic barriers that wealthier, politically connected citizens can navigate. But poorer Americans cannot.
One of the clearest examples, Lott says, is the background check system.
Since 1998, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) has issued roughly 5.1 million initial denials. Gun control advocates often cite that number as proof the system stops dangerous criminals. But Lott says that framing is deeply misleading.
Those are initial denials, not confirmed prohibitions. According to Lott, more than 99 percent of those denials are mistakes, usually caused by name and birthdate similarities. Because background checks often rely on phonetic name matching rather than full identifying data, law-abiding buyers with common names are flagged, especially within racial and ethnic groups where naming patterns overlap.
The result, Lott argues, is that lawful Black and Hispanic gun buyers are disproportionately delayed or blocked from exercising their rights. Fixing those errors isn’t simple, either. Appeals can cost $3,000 or more, placing them far out of reach for many families.
That error rate shows up clearly in enforcement statistics. In 2022 alone, NICS issued more than 131,000 denials, yet prosecutors brought just 18 indictments, a prosecution rate of roughly 0.014 percent. If private employers ran background checks with that level of inaccuracy, Lott says, they’d be sued into oblivion.
The problem isn’t limited to background checks.
Lott pointed to Los Angeles County as a real-world example of how discretionary permitting systems skew toward elites. Prior to the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, fewer than 300 concealed carry permits existed in a county with more than eight million adults. Permit holders were overwhelmingly wealthy, politically connected men. Women, Black residents, and Hispanics were dramatically underrepresented, despite facing similar or higher crime risks.
Cost barriers produce similar outcomes elsewhere. Illinois charges roughly $450 for a concealed carry permit, while Indiana charges $0. Unsurprisingly, Indiana sees far higher permit participation in high-crime, low-income areas, while Illinois permits are concentrated among affluent suburban residents.
“Gun control doesn’t disarm criminals,” Lott argued. “It disarms the people most likely to be victims.”
His conclusion was blunt: when gun ownership becomes expensive, discretionary, and bureaucratic, it stops being a right and starts being a privilege reserved for the wealthy and well-connected.
For communities facing the highest crime rates, Lott says, that distinction can be deadly.
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