John Lott is loved by a lot of people.

A lot.

"More guns, less crimes," he claims.

Wrong.

It's "More blacks, more crime; Less blacks, less crime."

Gun Violence in U.S. Cities Compared to the Deadliest Nations in the World (yes, there is a correlation to the size of each cities black population)

Especially when guns are involved.

Luckily for us, Atlantic Monthly has cobbled together a breakdown of major American cities and the rates of gun violence found there. Mr. Lott, pay attention; there will be a quiz when we're done [Gun Violence in U.S. Cities Compared to the Deadliest Nations in the World, Atlantic Cities, 1-22-13]:

"We can't put this off any longer," President Obama implored the nation last week as he introduced 23 executive actions designed to reduce gun violence in America. While the United States has the highest level of gun ownership per capita in the world, its rate of gun homicides, about three per 100,000 people, is far lower than that of Honduras, the country with the world's highest gun homicide rate (roughly 68 gun murders per 100,000 people). But America's homicide rate varies significantly by city and metro area, as I pointed out here at Cities a few weeks ago.

The map below compares the rate of gun murders in American cities to nations around the world. Building upon Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data used in that post, Zara Matheson of the Martin Prosperity Institute compiled additional data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and other sources collated by The Guardian. (While international crime data suffer from significant reporting and comparison issues, homicide data is more reliable. As the Urban Institute's John Roman points out, it is the one type of crime that is "hard to fake" and also most likely to be reported.)

The pattern is staggering. A number of U.S. cities have gun homicide rates in line with the most deadly nations in the world.
If it were a country, New Orleans (with a rate 62.1 gun murders per 100,000 people) would rank second in the world.
Detroit's gun homicide rate (35.9) is just a bit less than El Salvador (39.9).
Baltimore's rate (29.7) is not too far off that of Guatemala (34.8).
Gun murder in Newark (25.4) and Miami (23.7) is comparable to Colombia (27.1).
Washington D.C. (19) has a higher rate of gun homicide than Brazil (18.1).
Atlanta's rate (17.2) is about the same as South Africa (17).
Cleveland (17.4) has a higher rate than the Dominican Republic (16.3).
Gun murder in Buffalo (16.5) is similar to Panama (16.2).
Houston's rate (12.9) is slightly higher than Ecuador's (12.7).
Gun homicide in Chicago (11.6) is similar to Guyana (11.5).
Phoenix's rate (10.6) is slightly higher than Mexico (10).
Los Angeles (9.2) is comparable to the Philippines (8.9).
Boston rate (6.2) is higher than Nicaragua (5.9).
New York, where gun murders have declined to just four per 100,000, is still higher than Argentina (3).
Even the cities with the lowest homicide rates by American standards, like San Jose and Austin, compare to Albania and Cambodia respectively.
Yes, it's true we are comparing American cities to nations. But most of these countries here have relatively small populations, in many cases comparable to large U.S. metros.

The sad reality is that many American cities have rates of gun homicides comparable to the some of the most violent nations in the world.

The sad reality is that many American cities are no longer filled with Americans; they are filled with black people. According to 2010 US Census information:

Consult the map of the United States and compare the gun violence in cities replete with black citizens and those with a paucity of black citizens.

Notice any... trends?

Now, for those believing "More guns, less crime" as espoused by Mr. Lott, let's look at South Africa [Guns Are Everywhere in South Africa. But South Africans Don't Feel Safer Because of It, Slate, 2-14-13]:

It’s surprising to learn that an Olympic athlete stands accused of murder, but there’s nothing new about gun violence in South Africa. While the country’s gun-related violent crime rate has dropped in the wake of 2000’s Firearms Control Act, The Guardian reports that “many people say they live in fear of crime in South Africa, with Johannesburg still listed as one of the five most dangerous cities in the word, along with Mogadishu and New Orleans.” In a Globe and Mail article today, Geoffrey York reported:

South African airports and casinos have prominent signs directing people to storage rooms to deposit their weapons. Criminals assume that their victims have guns. When they break into a house, their first step is to search for the owner’s gun.

Guns are widely used in the most common crimes here: they are used in 77 per cent of house robberies and 87 per cent of business robberies, and they are the cause of death in more than half of all murders, reports say.

Fear of guns is why South Africa’s middle classes are hidden behind three-metre-high electrified fences and walls, in compounds with motion detectors and metal-barred doors. They hire security companies with gun-toting guards, who promise “immediate armed response” to every activated alarm.

As that last paragraph suggests, many South Africans don’t trust the police to protect them. GlobalPost has noted “growing frustration over this country’s corrupt and incompetent police at seemingly every level of the system, from traffic cops soliciting a bribe for a “cold drink” to the controversial appointments of some of the country’s highest-ranking police officials.” In 2012, The Economist reported that:

Last year 5,869 formal complaints were laid against the police, mainly for assault and attempted murder. Police statistics concede that 566 people, including innocent bystanders, were shot dead or otherwise killed by the police in 2009-10; another 294 died in their custody.

Police corruption and venality breed lawlessness, and it also prompts citizens to start taking protection into their own hands. The Guardian reported that “six out of 10 South Africans feared burglary more than any other crime,” and that many people relied on private security services to pick up the police department’s slack. Pistorius’s apartment complex seems to have been a veritable fortress; the New York Times reported that the buildings were “protected by high walls and razor wire.”

Some early reports indicated that Pistorius may have accidentally mistaken his girlfriend for an intruder. (The police have dismissed this theory.) This wouldn’t have been the first time he made such a mistake; late last year, he tweeted about having thought his washing machine was a burglar. The facts of this particular case are still in dispute, but a defense of mistakenly firing at a perceived intruder is more plausible in corrupt, gun-infested South Africa than it might be elsewhere. “And that is a particularly South African mistake, that we are so paranoid you are ready to fire off bullets when you don’t know what is coming,” an acquaintance of Pistorius’s told the Times this afternoon. “We are such a messed up country in some ways, and every now and then it comes to the surface with events that bring it into such stark relief.”

South Africa was once the jewel of the continent of Africa; when it was controlled by white people.

Actually, it was a nation built by white people.

Today -- though guns are everywhere, crime and mayhem is everywhere.

Today -- South Africa is 79% black and 9% white.

John Lott is loved by a lot of people. Especially conservatives.

A lot of people.

"More guns, less crimes," he claims.

Wrong.

It's "More blacks, more crime; Less blacks, less crime."