Why gun control won't work

After every mass shooting in the US, the debate is roughly the same.

Left-wing commentators point out that America is the “only country where this happens”, and share scatterplots of murder rate and against gun ownership which show the US to be an outlier on both. Meanwhile, the NRA puts out an inane statement like “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. There are widespread calls for “common-sense gun laws”. But in the end, nothing really gets done.

In this post I want to argue that none of the gun control policies currently on the table would have any meaningful impact on gun violence in the US. While some might make a small difference, and might therefore be worth implementing, there’s no realistic way to turn the US into, say, Canada – simply through gun control. I say this as someone who has no particular interest in guns and has never owned one.