In the wake of Wednesday's shooting of two journalists in Virginia, one crime expert is calling out people who claim banning firearms helps reduce violence.
"Maybe they've heard of Switzerland, which has a higher gun possession rate than we have here in the United States. Maybe they've heard of Israel. If you look across the countries in the world, the ones that have the highest gun ownership rate clearly have lower homicide rates," said John Lott Jr., president of Crime Prevention Research Center, during an interview on
Newsmax TV's "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"To me, the more important factor is that every country, every place that has tried to ban guns has seen an increase in murder rate after the ban has gone into effect. You think you'd find at least one place where a ban was associated with fewer homicides. Instead, you see dramatically the reverse happen. There's countries you see six, seven fold increases in murder rates after guns are banned."
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The shooting in Virginia resulted in the death of a reporter, who was conducting an interview, and her cameraman. The interviewee was also shot but is expected to live.
The shooting, which took place in Bedford County, Virginia, occurred during a live TV broadcast.
The incident prompted politicians and others to bring up the issue of gun control, including President Barack Obama.
"It breaks my heart every time you read about or hear about these kinds of incidents,"
Obama said. "What we know is that the number of people who die from gun-related incidents around this country dwarfs any deaths that happen through terrorism."
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe pushed for stricter gun laws after the shooting.
"There are too many guns in the hands of people that shouldn't have guns," McAuliffe said,
Politico reports.
"There is too much gun violence in America."
During
an interview with CNN, McAuliffe said America needs stricter background checks on would-be gun owners.
"A background check takes two to three minutes. I just really believe everyone who purchases a firearm in our nation should go through a background check," McAuliffe said.
"It shouldn't be political."
Lott said those types of laws wouldn't do much to stop violence.
"That law would've been completely useless in stopping this attack, just like it would've been useless in stopping all the mass public shootings that the president has pushed for this law after it occurred," Lott said. "They wanted to speak out, they knew what they wanted to do here. The only thing that this law is going to do is raise the cost of people being able to go and own firearms. It has nothing to do with safety, per se.
"The bottom line is just to try to have some type of law that would reduce gun ownership rather than something that would go and have any real effect on crime rates or these types of horrible incidences."
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