if we believe less guns means less gun deaths, then we have not looked at the numbers.
The data you presented about sales makes sense. Barack Obama was the greatest gun salesman in history, during his term the gun maker stocks he personally owned went up 750% during his term. Obviously at some point there has to be a market correction.
What is sad is that we know already which things are effective and which are not.
all of the laws that address which guns are legal and who may possess them and where do not work at all. they only affect the law abiding who don't often commit gun crimes.
Now if you want to actually reduce gun crime we also know what works, laws that target individuals who actually commit gun crime, habitual gun offenders. These individuals, about 1 in every 10,000 people, commit over 90% of all gun crime.
So there are two effective ways to reduce gun crime by targeting those individuals, the one way that works very well is to lock them up for long periods. Instead of one year or less for a felon using a gun in a crime give them 10 years. That way they are out on the street way less and commit far fewer gun crimes.
The other thing that works quite well is to pay gun criminals to stay out of trouble and give them the support to do that.
Those two policies can reduce gun crime like 80% or more. The gun control policies people offer do not reduce gun crime at all.
Can you explain "pay gun criminals to stay out of trouble"?
Wouldn't that encourage people to commit gun crime so they can then collect a pay check?
No, because it's not very much and it's only for those who have already served their sentences and committed multiple gun crimes. Essentially they identify those people who are repeat gun offenders, the population that commits 90%+ of gun crimes, and after they go through the criminal justice system they offer them a choice of entering this program where they get like $1000 a month as long as they don't commit crimes and participate in counseling and job skills and make a life plan and such. In a large city with a bad gang problem this is a total of 50 individuals. When they implement this program gun homicides drop by like 80%. about 1 in 10,000 people qualify.
Those are amazing results. Do you know the links to any articles where I can read more about these types of programs?
pick your poison:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=richmond+ca+gun+violence+program&form=EDGTCT&qs=PF&cvid=09f23b7657f847e4b83ab9d7303e3ae7&refig=f04a08885d934a6bcfe2a4ab79893b4b&cc=US&setlang=en-US&PC=DCTE
These two articles give a lot of info and perspective:
http://www.nccdglobal.org/sites/default/files/publication_pdf/ons-process-evaluation.pdf
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/richmond-california-murder-rate-gun-death/
From reading them, I am not sure if it scalable or it is dependent on unique circumstances and people.
I am going to read some more.
I think the idea of identifying those tiny fraction who do almost all the gun crime and locking them up for a while and also offering them some way out of that lifestyle makes a lot of sense, otherwise they will just keep shooting people, I think it's a lot cheaper too in the long run. Dead bodies and murder cases cost money. We will have to see how it works in Sacramento, that's a city of 500,000.