Gun Control measures of questionable efficacy

 Fox News:

Calls for gun control have echoed across the nation following a series of devastating mass shootings. Some experts, however, say there’s little to no evidence showing that tightening laws on guns will prevent violent crimes and similar shootings.

"Not really," Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott told Fox News Digital when asked if there is empirical evidence showing gun control measures can prevent violent crimes. "There's been a lot of studies done on things like assault weapons bans, background checks … Even for the assault weapons ban, even the Clinton administration - which signed it into law - paid for research on it. And even their studies couldn't find any benefits in terms of reducing a type of violent crime or in terms of stopping things like mass public shootings."

President Biden addressed the nation following the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting last month, which left 19 children and two teachers dead, demanding "commonsense" gun laws and argued the Second Amendment is "not absolute."

"We need to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. And if we can't ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21; strengthen background checks; enact safe storage and red flag laws; repeal the immunity, that protect gun manufacturers from liability; address the mental health crisis, deepening the trauma of gun violence," Biden said on June 2.

GUN CRIMES GRAB MOST MEDIA ATTENTION, WHILE GUN USE IN SELF-DEFENSE GETS MERELY A FRACTION: EXPERTS

Lawmakers answered some of the president's calls in June, with a bipartisan group of senators announcing they reached a tentative agreement on a gun package. The proposal includes a national expansion of mental health services for children and families; an enhanced review process for gun buyers under the age of 21; penalties for straw purchases and additional funding for school resource officers.

Biden has also argued that "we know [gun laws] work and have a positive impact," pointing to the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 and claiming "mass shootings tripled" following the ban expiring in 2004.

Experts who spoke to Fox News Digital, however, pointed to the 1994 ban as having "had no appreciable impact on crime."

"President Biden's proposed measures to curb guns would NOT reduce gun crime and also have constitutional problems," George Mason University Professor Emerita Joyce Lee Malcolm told Fox News Digital. "We had an assault weapon ban for 10 years. It was allowed to expire because the Justice Department research said it had no appreciable impact on crime."

A Department of Justice study published in 1999 that examined the short-term effects of the ban found it "has failed to reduce the average number of victims per gun murder incident or multiple gunshot wound victims."
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Calls to do something whether it works are not generally follow mass murder attacks.  The problem is that murderers don't care about the law or they would not be murderers.