Dr. John Lott talked to Newsweek about what will motivate gun ownership in the United States. Many others on both sides of the gun control debate are quoted as saying that this will impact the US gun debate, but Lott took a different tack.
But John Lott, president of the pro-gun Crime Prevention Center, says that using Ukraine to argue for less gun control in the U.S. is a short-term strategy at best, noting that a 2019 Gallup Poll concluded that 63 percent of gun owners purchased their weapon for personal safety, not to protect the U.S. from an invading army.
The pro-gun arguments that resonate with Americans, Lott told Newsweek, are that “police budgets are being cut, inmates are being released, bail is being reformed and there are spikes in violent crime.”
He notes, though, that Eastern European countries are rethinking their opposition to gun ownership, and he has been advising pro-gun activists from the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Astonia ever since the Russian invasion.
“A lot of these countries have laws left over from the Communist era when gun ownership was basically banned,” Lott said. “In the Ukraine, less than 2 percent legally owned a gun until the invasion, then 18,000 fully automatic rifles were handed out in one day. It’s still a fraction of the population of 41 million and small compared to the size of the Russian army, but it can get other countries to move before it all hits the fan.”
Paul Bond, “American Pro-Gun Activists See an Opening as Ukraine Arms its Citizens,” Newsweek, March 3, 2022.
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