At Bloomberg Opinion, I run through three lessons that we need to absorb if we want to reduce gun violence.
First: The mainstream gun control agenda of the last 30 years would have negligible effects even if enacted. When the Justice Department looked at the assault-weapons ban in effect from 1995 to 2004, it concluded that a renewal’s “effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” A 2020 review of the research on assault-weapons bans by the Rand Corporation found that even the effects on mass shootings were “inconclusive.” Expanding background checks would achieve little, either: Most mass shooters have already passed them.
You may also find interesting an article I wrote a few years ago in NR, about the curious parallels in our national arguments about gun control and abortion.