On Friday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “The Five,” co-host Greg Gutfeld challenged a study released earlier this week that says there is a correlation between racism and gun violence.
The study, conducted by researchers Australia’s Monash University and Britain’s Manchester University, stated that whites are more prone to own guns and while blacks are more prone to be victims of gun violence. Although the study doesn’t outright make a direct connection between those two findings, Gutfeld challenged the study, pointing to figures of gun violence among whites and among blacks.
“Some foreign researchers published a study saying that owning a gun makes you racist,” Gutfeld said. “Now, before I debunk this crap, let’s see why they did this study. Researcher Kerry O’Brien tells The Daily News, quote, there have already been research showing blacks are more likely to be shot so we thought there must be something happening between the concept of being black and some whites wanting guns. Idiotic. Somehow Kerry manages not to finish his thought. Blacks are more likely to be shot — by other blacks. Over 91 percent of blacks are murdered by other blacks and 84 percent of whites are murdered by other whites. So even the premise is false.”
Gutfeld went on to cite gun expert and economist John Lott, who said the race findings of the study were for whites and nonwhites, which was left out in comments from the researchers in The Daily News story he cited. He also noted another argument from Lott in which he says strict gun ownership laws in urban areas actually hurt blacks more than anyone.
“So I emailed gun expert John Lott on the study and he found the racist findings were the say for both white and nonwhite,” he continued. “How can that be? This is nonsense. No wonder the researchers hid that part. Finally, legal gun ownership benefits blacks more than anyone. As Lott points out, poor blacks in high-crime areas are more likely to be crime victims. They need guns. And left-wing efforts to impose large fees on gun ownership have resulted in hefty price tags to register unlicensed guns in cities like D.C. or Chicago, making guns a luxury for the rich and the white. So, who’s racist now? If there’s anything worse than bad science, it’s really bad science. And you make bad science by using your academic perch to push political ideology and bigoted stereotypes. But what do you expect from these guys? They’re probably in the KKK.”