'Common-Sense' Gun Reform Is Overrated. Here's Why. | Cato Institute

'Common-Sense' Gun Reform Is Overrated. Here's Why. | Cato Institute: "So-called “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines are easy political targets because they sound scary to people unfamiliar with firearms. However, restricting either or both would likely have no measurable effect on gun crime rates."



"firearm homicide clearance rates — that is, police apprehending a suspect and charging him for the killing — are embarrassingly low in minority neighborhoods. In her book, “Ghettoside,” Los Angeles Times journalist Jill Leovy argues that an absence of trust between police and black communities, along with a lack of adequate police resources aimed at solving homicides in black neighborhoods, combine to cheapen black life by allowing black murder to go virtually unpunished. If there is a gun violence “epidemic” anywhere in America, it is in the impoverished black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, Baltimore and similar enclaves."



"More than three decades of high murder rates show that restricting legal access to guns was not the answer to gun violence problems and that making legal firearm acquisition harder is unlikely to meaningfully impact violence in America’s inner cities."