Why Do Gun Control Laws Cause Violence?

Why do most of 19 different major varieties of gun control laws appear to have no impact, with a few exceptions, on the types of violence which frequently involve guns? Many explanations are suggested by both our own results and those of prior research. First, some gun laws are intended to have their effects by reducing gun ownership levels, so some gun laws may fail because they do not achieve their proximate goal of reducing gun ownership (Table IVA). However, our results also generally indicate that gun prevalence levels do not have a net positive effect on violence rates (top row, Table IVB). Consequently, gun laws may fail simply because, even if they did reduce gun prevalence, this would not produce a reduction in violence rates.
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