Little evidence to support the efficacy of more gun control

By John Lott
The Hill
June 1st. 2018
Gun control advocates seem willing to latch onto anything they can use to justify more stringent laws. They were at it again in the wake of the recent Santa Fe High School shooting. In the New York Times last Thursday, Nicholas Kristof pushed for 10 supposedly “modest” gun control measures.

Everyone wants to do something to stop mass public shootings. And Kristof is right that fewer school doors aren’t the solution. Schools have as many entrances as they do for a reason (such as escaping fires). One door with a metal detector doesn’t mean much if the guard is the first person killed, and lining up a large number of students at one entrance creates an attractive target for killers to attack there.

But we also have to be careful that the gun control laws primarily disarm criminals, not law-abiding citizens. There has to be reasonable evidence that the regulations reduce crime.

Let’s take a look at these proposals.

  • Universal background checks
  • Closing the Charleston Loophole
  • Red flag laws
  • Taking guns out of the hands of accused domestic abusers
  • Safe storage gun laws
  • Make serial numbers harder to file off