Dr. John Lott has a new op-ed piece at The Federalist.
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If policymakers and advocates are serious about reducing such incidents, the focus needs to shift toward measures that directly address the factors involved.
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As is so typical, just hours after the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Democrats were already calling for more gun control. But they made the same mistake they continually make — they called for gun control laws that were irrelevant for stopping the attack they are discussing.
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The attacker had a 12-gauge Mossberg Maverick 88 pump-action shotgun and an Armscor Precision .38 semi-automatic pistol. The guns were obtained from two different gun stores in California. That is an important fact that gun control advocates need to appreciate because gun control groups rate California as the state with the “best” gun control laws.
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Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., appeared on CNN’s State of the Union the morning after the incident and suggested the shooting could become a “moment of unity” to advance “universal, violent criminal background check[s]” for gun ownership. However, California already enforces universal background checks on all gun transfers. The media rarely press gun control advocates on this point, yet my researchshows that not a single mass public shooting this century would have been prevented by universal background checks, even if they had been perfectly enforced nationwide.
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Malcolm Kenyatta, currently a Democratic National Committee Vice Chair, responded to the event by calling for a ban on “military-grade weapons” and a closing of what he described as “lethal loopholes.” However, the perpetrator did not purchase either gun as a so-called semi-automatic “assault weapon,” much less as a fully automatic military-grade weapon. California, in fact, already enforces an assault weapons ban.
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On Monday, Ana Navarro led a discussion on ABC’s The View, where the hosts talked about the incident, expressing hope that Trump and his cabinet had “felt the fear” of being shot and that moment would make them advocate for additional gun control restrictions. Navarro may have forgotten that Trump’s views on gun control haven’t changed despite his previously facing multiple assassination attempts. Other administration officials who attended the dinner also held firm. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated on Sunday that policymakers should not use the attack to justify imposing new restrictions on law-abiding gun owners.
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Gun control organizations, however, quickly weighed in. Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety argued: “Trump and his supporters are using the horrifying shooting at the White House Correspondent’s [sic] Dinner to promote his new ballroom, all while ignoring the real problem: Easy access to guns.” Yet Everytown consistently praises California’s gun laws as the strongest in the nation and does not characterize the state as having widespread “easy access to guns.” Instead, it presents California as a national model and a success story that other states and the federal government should follow.
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But gun control groups shouldn’t hold out California as a model for the rest of the country to follow so quickly. California’s per capita rate of mass public shootings has consistently exceeded that of the rest of the country. The rate is much lower in Texas, but gun control groups give Texas an “F” grade.
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Since 2010, California’s mass public shooting rate per capita has been 43 percent higher than Texas’ and 29 percent higher than the rest of the United States. From 2020 on, it has been even worse. California’s rate was 276 percent higher than Texas’ and 100 percent higher than the rest of the country.
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Unfortunately, assassinations aren’t rare, with a national leader killed in such an attack in “nearly two out of every three years” from 1950 to 2004. A survey of global reports on assassinations and assassination attempts between 2019 and 2020 found that in the Americas 52 percent of assassination cases occurred in South America, 41 percent in Central America, and just 3 percent in North America. Close to 90 percent of assassination victims were shot, despite South American and Central American countries having guncontrol laws that are among the strictest in the world.
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In the aftermath of the attack, the immediate push for additional gun control once again overlooked whether the proposed policies would have addressed the circumstances at hand. The firearms used were obtained legally in a state already widely regarded as having the strictest gun laws in the country, underscoring a disconnect between policy proposals and real-world outcomes.
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If policymakers and advocates are serious about reducing such incidents, the focus needs to shift toward measures that directly address the factors involved, such as reducing the rhetoric that seems to have driven the attacker at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, rather than reiterating familiar but ineffective solutions.
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