It's not my issue, so my insight may be unreliable. But I think the gun rights people dislike a lot of proposed control legislation because they prefer searching for your keys where you lost them, not under the streetlamp where the light is better.
During most of the first one, there was no Federal gun control law. (The National Firearms Act of 1934 was mostly in response to heavy use of Tommy Guns and related items by Prohibition-era gangsters. It put heavy paperwork requirements on the purchase of machine guns, short-barreled rifles, silencers, grenades, and grenade launchers.)
Early in the second wave, the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed. (It was mostly in response to political assassinations. Outlawed mail-order of guns, put limits on inter-State shipment, required licensed sellers to record ID of buyers, forbade obliteration of serial numbers, forbade possession of guns by most convicted felons or drug users...)
Then we got the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. Which the Dept. of Justice didn't think would have an effect, because such weapons are rifles. And rifles are rarely used to commit crimes.
Since the expiration of that AWB, there hasn't been much increase in murder rates for the nation.
So, have these laws had an effect on the murder rate? Maybe, but other forces (urbanization, Prohibition, War on Drugs, possibly lead in gasoline, possibly abortion rates) seem to have had stronger effects.
So yeah, people are looking for their keys where the lights are, not where the keys were likely dropped.
Ownership and use of guns are a cultural/tribal marker. So I guess that's why gun-control advocates want to write more laws about guns.
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Not sure how I'd say it, but I see and can agree with what you are saying.
The anti-gun groups don't really want to find the keys anyway. They want to ban the cars altogether.
You know, murder in the United States has gone through two large rise-and-fall patterns in the past Century.
Roughly, these were from 1910-1940 and 1960-1990.
During most of the first one, there was no Federal gun control law. (The National Firearms Act of 1934 was mostly in response to heavy use of Tommy Guns and related items by Prohibition-era gangsters. It put heavy paperwork requirements on the purchase of machine guns, short-barreled rifles, silencers, grenades, and grenade launchers.)
Early in the second wave, the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed. (It was mostly in response to political assassinations. Outlawed mail-order of guns, put limits on inter-State shipment, required licensed sellers to record ID of buyers, forbade obliteration of serial numbers, forbade possession of guns by most convicted felons or drug users...)
Then we got the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. Which the Dept. of Justice didn't think would have an effect, because such weapons are rifles. And rifles are rarely used to commit crimes.
Since the expiration of that AWB, there hasn't been much increase in murder rates for the nation.
So, have these laws had an effect on the murder rate? Maybe, but other forces (urbanization, Prohibition, War on Drugs, possibly lead in gasoline, possibly abortion rates) seem to have had stronger effects.
So yeah, people are looking for their keys where the lights are, not where the keys were likely dropped.
Ownership and use of guns are a cultural/tribal marker. So I guess that's why gun-control advocates want to write more laws about guns.
I find that a pretty common feature of any legislative solution.
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