anderson: i am vaguely familiar with john lott. john lott is one of the heroes of the kind of second amendment school of individual rights, of guns, guns everywhere kind of deal, of being against gun safety regulations. as i had mentioned earlier, i haven't been pro-gun, anti-gun, but what i have been is for reasonable gun safety laws, such as there is no reason to have semiautomatic weapons in the hands of civilians on our city -- so it is being commonsense about it and not doctrinaire. host: david in tennessee, text message. "i agree with what i believe is your critique of our racist and violent society, but we have created a collateral, parasitic layer of well compensated, commentators and helpers, many of them ensconced in universities, a critical foundation of the system, who appeared to be neutralized by the dominant culture." comment? prof. anderson: ok. i thought i knew where that was headed, then it veered in another way. i think part of what you are laying out here is that there are scholars who feed on the kind of ills i