The United States incarcerates more people than most other nations. The odds that someone incarcerated is a black American is far higher than one would expect based on what percentage of American people are black.

Now, let’s talk about gun control for a moment.

Gun control creates a whole new way to lock people up. Most people would rather risk prison than death, after all, so a lot of people are more likely to break those laws than take the chance to end up in the morgue.

That includes a whole lot of black people, as hip-hop artist Killer Mike notes.

Killer Mike believes any new gun control laws in America will hurt Black people before any other group — but the rapper’s telling us a few other ways he thinks the spike in gun violence can be flattened.Mike joined us Wednesday on “TMZ Live” to discuss potential curfews for minors in Atlanta — something he’s all for as a measure to mitigate violence … and, he says he had curfew when he was growing up in the area.

However, he remains firmly against the passage of new legislation as a means to reduce gun-related crime. Mike says he’s a Second Amendment guy, first and foremost, but adds he has another problem with tighter gun laws.

He explains why he believes those laws would impact Black Americans “worst and first.”

Mike tells us he’d rather see Black families armed, and better educated on the safer use and storage of weapons.

I’m in complete agreement.

Black Americans are already more likely to be arrested on gun charges. Whether they’re committing those crimes at a higher rate or not is irrelevant. The vast majority of those laws simply shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Further, the odds of a black man being killed are higher than the odds of a white man. And that’s just by looking at raw numbers, not as a percentage of the population.

So, there’s a good reason why a black man would want to carry a gun regardless of the law.

More gun laws won’t suddenly make this segment of our population less likely to be shot. The people who are the problem are also obtaining guns regardless of the laws.

What happens with the new laws is that there are more people breaking those laws.

Yet if we take the educational approach Killer Mike is suggesting–providing education on how to own a firearm safely and use it effectively and lawfully–then we may start to see fewer black men incarcerated on gun charges and fewer black men murdered.

That, of course, will have an impact on the overall murder rate and ultimately undermine much of the gun control argument in the first place.

There are better ways we can spend our time and resources than finding new ways to lock people up. It would be nice to see them given a fair shot going forward.

A lot of people who disagree won’t listen to me, either, but maybe they’ll listen to Killer Mike.