Obama’s Useless Gun Solution

Another mass shooting, another call from President Barack Obama for gun control.

But expanded background checks and the other measures Obama advocates would not prevent most of the shootings they are intended to address, gun scholar John Lott said Friday.

“What we do know is that the laws that he’s pushed would not have any impact on any of these mass shootings that he’s publicly spoken about. Completely unrelated,” Lott said on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

Obama’s call came hours after Chris Harper-Mercer opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Retired Los Angeles Police Department Detective Mark Fuhrman said the president spoke prematurely.

“He didn’t have the facts about this shooting before he started offering his solutions,” Fuhrman told Ingraham.

Fuhrman, who rose to prominence 20 years ago during the O.J. Simpson trial and now works as an author and consultant, disputed Obama’s contention that strict gun regulations lead to lower crime. He pointed to cities like Washington, D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles and Obama’s home city of Chicago, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation but has had 111 shootings the past two weekends.

“It was almost an out-and-out lie,” he said.

Lott, founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center and author of “More Guns, Less Crime,” said the Oregon shooting appears to fit a familiar pattern. Despite state law allowing concealed-carry permit holders to have guns at public schools and colleges, Umpqua Community College prohibited students and faculty from having guns — even water guns — on campus.

“What we do know is that they keep happening in places where you are not allowed to have guns,” Lott said.

Not only that, Lott said, but the shooters often acknowledge that they select their targets based on such “gun-free” zones.

“We just see this time after time,” he said.

Fuhrman said that in 20 years of law enforcement, he only seized one gun that had not been stolen or illegally obtained.

“Restrictive guns laws only restrict people who follow the law,” he said.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Ingraham the irony of guns in America is that Obama has presided over massive gun sales.

“Here is a totally left-wing president who has led the largest increase in gun sales in American history. More people have bought guns in the six years under Obama than ever before in history,” he said. “And it’s because they’re afraid. There is a genuine fear of the federal government.”