El Paso Shooting (Yes, Again)

[onlinebiker]

As if on cue, Bill Clinton is back peddling the lie that the assault weapons ban worked.

This is a particularly dangerous lie, because the kernel of truth it’s built upon is that it could have.   In final analysis we know exactly why we couldn’t credit it for effect.  Why it didn’t.

The grandfathering of the law and the massive amount of pre-existing firearms.  Additionally, any potential gains were offset by increases in the use of other firearms.  

There was no mechanism in place to significantly reduce the firearms in circulation and so, even though the ban lasted for quite some time, it was more-than-half expected that it would expire before any gains could be realized.

This surplus, more than anything else, accounts for why strategies to reduce gun violence, working elsewhere, fail here.

-any gun control policy that doesn’t involve a massive federal buyback is effectively doomed to failure in the us.

-any gun control policy that fails to simultaneously target firearms through trace data will bleed whatever effect the ban, and the above, could conceivably have.

The Clinton ban was about aesthetics - not function.

It did diddley squat.