At The Federalist: No, Gun Control Wouldn’t Have Prevented The Latest Trump Assassination Attempt

 Dr. John Lott has a new op-ed piece at The Federalist.

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Summary: If policymakers and advocates are serious about reducing such incidents, the focus needs to shift toward measures that directly address the factors involved.

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As is so typical, just hours after the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Democrats were already calling for more gun control. But they made the same mistake they continually make — they called for gun control laws that were irrelevant for stopping the attack they are discussing.

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The attacker had a 12-gauge Mossberg Maverick 88 pump-action shotgun and an Armscor Precision .38 semi-automatic pistol. The guns were obtained from two different gun stores in California. That is an important fact that gun control advocates need to appreciate because gun control groups rate California as the state with the “best” gun control laws.

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Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., appeared on CNN’s State of the Union the morning after the incident and suggested the shooting could become a “moment of unity” to advance “universal, violent criminal background check[s]” for gun ownership. However, California already enforces universal background checks on all gun transfers. The media rarely press gun control advocates on this point, yet my researchshows that not a single mass public shooting this century would have been prevented by universal background checks, even if they had been perfectly enforced nationwide.

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Malcolm Kenyatta, currently a Democratic National Committee Vice Chair, responded to the event by calling for a ban on “military-grade weapons” and a closing of what he described as “lethal loopholes.” However, the perpetrator did not purchase either gun as a so-called semi-automatic “assault weapon,” much less as a fully automatic military-grade weapon. California, in fact, already enforces an assault weapons ban.

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On Monday, Ana Navarro led a discussion on ABC’s The View, where the hosts talked about the incident, expressing hope that Trump and his cabinet had “felt the fear” of being shot and that moment would make them advocate for additional gun control restrictions. Navarro may have forgotten that Trump’s views on gun control haven’t changed despite his previously facing multiple assassination attempts. Other administration officials who attended the dinner also held firm. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated on Sunday that policymakers should not use the attack to justify imposing new restrictions on law-abiding gun owners.

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Gun control organizations, however, quickly weighed in. Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety argued: “Trump and his supporters are using the horrifying shooting at the White House Correspondent’s [sic] Dinner to promote his new ballroom, all while ignoring the real problem: Easy access to guns.” Yet Everytown consistently praises California’s gun laws as the strongest in the nation and does not characterize the state as having widespread “easy access to guns.” Instead, it presents California as a national model and a success story that other states and the federal government should follow.

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But gun control groups shouldn’t hold out California as a model for the rest of the country to follow so quickly. California’s per capita rate of mass public shootings has consistently exceeded that of the rest of the country. The rate is much lower in Texas, but gun control groups give Texas an “F” grade. 

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Since 2010, California’s mass public shooting rate per capita has been 43 percent higher than Texas’ and 29 percent higher than the rest of the United States. From 2020 on, it has been even worse. California’s rate was 276 percent higher than Texas’ and 100 percent higher than the rest of the country.

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Unfortunately, assassinations aren’t rare, with a national leader killed in such an attack in “nearly two out of every three years” from 1950 to 2004. A survey of global reports on assassinations and assassination attempts between 2019 and 2020 found that in the Americas 52 percent of assassination cases occurred in South America, 41 percent in Central America, and just 3 percent in North America. Close to 90 percent of assassination victims were shot, despite South American and Central American countries having guncontrol laws that are among the strictest in the world.

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In the aftermath of the attack, the immediate push for additional gun control once again overlooked whether the proposed policies would have addressed the circumstances at hand. The firearms used were obtained legally in a state already widely regarded as having the strictest gun laws in the country, underscoring a disconnect between policy proposals and real-world outcomes.

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If policymakers and advocates are serious about reducing such incidents, the focus needs to shift toward measures that directly address the factors involved, such as reducing the rhetoric that seems to have driven the attacker at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, rather than reiterating familiar but ineffective solutions.

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John R. Lott, Jr. “No, Gun Control Wouldn’t Have Prevented The Latest Trump Assassination Attempt,” The Federalist, May 1, 2026.

At Real Clear Politics: Gun Background Checks Are Failing the Wrong People

 Dr. John Lott has a new op-ed at Real Clear Politics.

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The background check system for gun purchases is a mess. Republicans have criticized Democratic presidents for failing to prosecute people denied gun purchases through background checks. Democrats have leveled the same criticism at Republican presidents. But both sides miss the real problem. The system generates mistaken denials – “false positives” – by confusing felons with non-felons, so the denials aren’t real cases. And those errors disproportionately affect black and Hispanic males.

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This week, the House will vote on Congressman Thomas Massie’s NICS Data Reporting Act. The House Judiciary Committee passed the bill unanimously. The legislation would require the Department of Justice to collect data on errors in the background check system.

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In the latest year available, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System denied 116,587 gun purchases in 2023, but returned only 14 indictments and just five convictions. These numbers are nothing new. In 2022, there were 131,865 denials, 18 indicted, and three convictions.

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For example, in 2013, Sen. Jeff Sessions, before becoming attorney general, accused the Obama administration of failing to enforce existing gun laws against prohibited purchasers. After joining the first Trump administration as attorney general, Sessions pledged to “swiftly and aggressively prosecute” prohibited individuals who attempted to buy firearms illegally. While in office, he declared: “The National Instant Criminal Background Check System is critical for us to be able to keep guns out of the hands of those that are prohibited from owning them.” He even branded the effort as “Lie-and-Try” prosecutions.

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But as I predicted at the time, Sessions’ efforts did not increase prosecutions. Gun-control groups such as the Giffords Law Center later complained that the Trump administration also failed to enforce the background check system.

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These cases are also extremely easy to prosecute: the buyer signs a form swearing they are not prohibited from purchasing a gun, presents government-issued ID, and is almost always recorded on video while attempting the purchase. Forgetting a long prison sentence is not a credible defense.

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Sessions failed because these were not legitimate cases. Prosecutors can charge a felon who is legally barred from buying a gun, but they cannot realistically prosecute someone simply because he shares a phonetically similar name and a similar birth date with a felon.

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The people most impacted by the false positives are poor minorities, since people tend to have names similar to others in their racial groups. Because a high proportion of black and Hispanic males are prohibited from owning guns, law-abiding minority males face the highest rate of background-check mistakes. 

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About 33% of black males and 18% of Hispanic males have felony records, compared with only about 12% of American men overall. Given those differences, it is not surprising that the system’s mistakes disproportionately affect black and Hispanic males.

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Many of those people are trying to buy guns to protect themselves. “This incredibly high rate of false positives imposes a real burden on the most vulnerable people,” said Reagan Dunn, the first national coordinator for Project Safe Neighborhoods, a Justice Department program started in 2001 to ensure gun laws are enforced.

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People who are denied can file an appeal, but most must hire a lawyer to do so. Legal fees are expensive, typically starting at around $3,000. Many who start the process drop it after they see how costly it is. Many people may want a gun for protection, yet even middle-income individuals may decide that the cost of an appeal exceeds the value they place on owning a gun.

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Fortunately, there’s an easy fix. The government should be required to use all of the information that it collects when gun buyers fill out the form to buy a gun (e.g., exact names, Social Security numbers, and addresses). If private companies constantly confused innocent people with criminals when doing background checks on employees, lawsuits would drive them out of business.  

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Many Democrats don’t want to fix this because it would eliminate their big talking point about 5.1 million dangerous or prohibited people having been stopped from buying guns since the instant background check system went into effect in 1998. Many Republicans have also invested a lot in attacking Obama and the Democrats for not enforcing gun control laws and prosecuting more prohibited purchasers.  

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Fortunately, Massie’s bill that Congress looks set to pass this week will help make these problems clear and them hopefully lead to changes that will actually fix the system. 

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Everyone wants to stop dangerous people from buying guns. But let’s fix the system so it stops those who are at risk of causing harm, not law-abiding citizens who want to protect themselves and their families.  

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John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. He served as the senior advisor for research and statistics in the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice during 2020-21.

John R. Lott, Jr., “Gun Background Checks Are Failing the Wrong People,” Real Clear Politics, May 11, 2026.

At the Federalist: New Jersey Uses Glock Lawsuit To Build The Gun Registry that Would then Immediately be Used to Confiscate Guns Politicians Always Denied Wanting

 Dr. John Lott has a new op-ed at The Federalist.

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For those concerned that background checks will eventually be used to create gun registries that can later facilitate confiscation, they need only look at what is happening now in New Jersey. New Jersey’s Attorney General relies on questionable claims to justify targeting Glocks as firearms that can supposedly be easily converted into true, fully automatic machine guns.

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New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport’s office is subpoenaing Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) across the state for records involving Glock pistol sales to New Jersey residents. The subpoenas, reportedly dated around May 11, 2026, began reaching dealers on May 14 and impose a response deadline of June 15, 2026. A Superior Court judge hearing the case has refused to dismiss the lawsuit and is allowing discovery to go forward.

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The subpoenas demand records covering every lawful sale or transfer of Glock handguns dating back to January 2016 — roughly the past decade. They reportedly target all New Jersey FFLs and require dealers to turn over extensive customer and sales information.

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The demands include buyer names and addresses, dates of sale, firearm details such as make, model, serial number, and caliber, and whether the firearms were sold to civilians or law enforcement. The subpoenas also seek information on how dealers obtained Glock inventory, contracts or agreements with Glock, communications with Glock concerning sales, marketing, “switches,” or automatic-fire capability, and records related to advertising and marketing directed at New Jersey customers.

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Those who support gun ownership are concerned that compiling these buyer lists in litigation could expose personally identifiable information and serve as a step toward broader tracking or future confiscation efforts.

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“What’s funny is these folks want all the gun records, but they don’t want to give the federal government voting records,” said Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, noting the irony.

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Democrats are now using a background-check system that wrongly denies more than 99 percent of blocked gun purchases to help build a gun registry to facilitate confiscation. Those errors overwhelmingly burden law-abiding black and Hispanic men, who are disproportionately caught in mistaken denials despite having committed no disqualifying offense. The claim that gun registration is a useful tool for solving crimes is also false.

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New Jersey argues that Glock knowingly designed and marketed pistols that criminals can convert into illegal machine guns with so-called “Glock switches” or auto sears. According to the state, Glock has known about this problem for years, received repeated warnings from law enforcement, and still refused to redesign its pistols to make those conversions more difficult.

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Glock rejects the claim that its pistols are uniquely or unusually easy to convert. Glock’s semiautomatic operating system is not fundamentally different from many other modern semiautomatic pistols. Glock pistols use a fairly conventional short-recoil, locked-breech design that is common across much of the handgun industry. In addition, the company argues that criminals—not Glock—bear responsibility for illegally modifying firearms with already-prohibited conversion devices.

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Moreover, the mechanism created by a Glock switch differs fundamentally from the way a true fully automatic machine gun operates. A military-style machine gun uses an integrated fire-control system specifically engineered for automatic fire. By contrast, a Glock switch interferes with the pistol’s existing trigger-bar and reset mechanism. The device wedges the trigger bar out of engagement and forces the pistol’s short-recoil action to continue cycling uncontrollably as long as the trigger remains depressed.

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That crude method creates serious reliability and safety problems. Because the switch bypasses normal timing and reset functions, the pistol can fire before the slide and chamber are fully closed and locked. That creates a real risk of catastrophic malfunction, including damage to the firearm and potentially serious injury to the shooter.

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Common damage includes a destroyed or blown-open magazine, cracked or split receiver or upper, damaged or missing bolt, firing pin, extractor, ejector, operating springs, and stock.

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Flying brass shards or case fragments can slice skin (hands, arms, face, cheek) or embed in tissue. Real incidents include a shooter’s thumb being sliced open “like a box cutter” with powder burns, or brass embedding in a shoulder causing bleeding. Fragments can strike the face or eyes. 

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But others besides the shooter can also be harmed. “The problem about that is when you pull the trigger you can’t stop it, the gun, the bullets are going to go and what we’re seeing is young people and adults can’t control their gun. … ” warned Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff Leon Lott. “You may hit a lot of innocent people you may even hit people that’s on your team because you can’t control that gun.”

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New Jersey’s lawsuit against Glock goes far beyond targeting criminals who illegally modify firearms. By demanding detailed records on lawful gun buyers while advancing questionable claims about how these conversions actually work, the state is moving toward the type of firearm registry that gun owners have long feared.

John R Lott, Jr., “At the Federalist: New Jersey Uses Glock Lawsuit To Build The Gun Registry that Would then Immediately be Used to Confiscate Guns Politicians Always Denied Wanting,” The Federalist, May 20, 2026.