From Glenn Reynolds, on people ignoring assault weapons bans:
But since the point of gun control is to humiliate and grind down flyover people and demonstrate that the Ruling Class is ultimately the, well, Ruling Class — not to control crime — the appearance of submission is probably enough. Plus, a seldom enforced and often ignored law is ideal if you want to be able to target troublesome individuals later.
That pretty effectively sums it up.
Yes. It isn’t about crime control. The federal gov commissioned a study to see if the original 1994 AW reduced crime; the final results after ten years of the ban found that:
“there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury.”
Read it for yourself here:
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/204431.pdf
I’ll go along with the appearance of submission on the part of the ruling class. We need to kick their asses, so they leave us alone!