Sorry, Hillary: Trump's policies are clearly better for blacks

An article by John Lott in the New York Post.
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Hillary Clinton claims that some of Donald Trump’s appeal is “xenophobic, racist, misogynistic.” On Thursday she asked, “If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?”

But who actually cares more about blacks, in particular poor blacks?

On everything from education to jobs to crime, Trump’s policies offer a lifeline to people who have been losing ground for decades. Hillary’s policies will just exacerbate them. And no amount of speeches will change that.

On education, Trump strongly supports school choice. This would give inner-city blacks a way out of horribly performing public schools. Clinton attacks charters and clearly opposes other forms of school choice, opting to protect teachers unions at the expense of students.

And who’s harmed the most by illegal immigration? Who’s most likely to suffer unemployment or wage reductions due to the added competition? Young, unskilled blacks and Hispanics. The biggest beneficiaries? Wealthy people who get to pay less for lawn care and housecleaning.

But crime is the immediate, life-and-death issue for so many blacks and Hispanics trapped in high-crime urban areas. Too many come to physical harm, have their property stolen, or lose their jobs as businesses are driven from their neighborhoods.

Clinton seems more focused on helping criminals rather than their victims. She has promised to cut the US prison population by over 50 percent. By contrast, Trump says the problem is a lack of police in high-crime, heavily black areas. He believes in making things riskier for the criminals, not for the victims.

Clinton has responded to the Black Lives Matter movement by calling for more restrictions on police use of deadly force. She has refused to support stiff prison penalties for those who “knowingly caus[e] bodily injury” to police officers. But if you don’t believe that the police are the problem, making their jobs more dangerous or difficult means police will be less effective in stopping crime in these high-crime areas.

Clinton doesn’t understand that the most likely victims of violent crime — poor blacks living in high-crime, urban neighborhoods — are the ones who stand to benefit the most from being able to defend themselves, and in fact her gun-control plan basically amounts to letting whites get guns but not minorities.

For example, in Colorado in 2013, when the state enacted a tax on the private transfer of guns, all but two Democrats voted down a Republican amendment that would have exempted people below the poverty level from paying the new state tax.

High fees to register guns in places such as Washington, DC, New York City or Chicago have meant that only the wealthy can legally own guns.

Or take something as seemingly innocuous as background checks. Virtually everyone who fails a background check is someone who is legally eligible to buy a gun, so we’re not talking here about preventing guns from falling into the wrong hands. Law-abiding minorities, particularly blacks, are the ones most likely to be stopped from buying guns.

Hillary Clinton claims that background checks have stopped 2.4 million dangerous or prohibited people from buying a gun. But when she says that what she really means is that there were 2.4 million “initial denials.”

About 96 percent of “initial denials” are dropped after the first two stages of review. Many more are dropped during the three remaining stages. But the Obama administration no longer conducts those reviews, which means nearly all initial denials are likely still mistakes — they’re just never corrected.

Eventually applicants used to be able to get their gun, though the delay could be dangerous for someone who needs a gun for self-defense. Now, however, most applicants are forced to appeal their denial, and will likely find it necessary to spend thousands on an attorney to do so.

These “initial denials” affect certain racial groups more than others. Hispanics are more likely to share names with other Hispanics, and the same is true of blacks. Because 30 percent of black males are forbidden from buying guns because of their criminal records, law-abiding black males are especially likely to have their names confused with those of prohibited people.

Democrats clearly haven’t served blacks well, and more of the same isn’t going to help. If blacks are willing to listen to Trump, his logical arguments may have a real chance of winning them over.