They've also been illegal in Australia after a mass shooting and it prevented further mass shootings for almost 20 years now.
Also, the amount of mass shootings in France is way lower than in the United States.
Obviously, introducing a law is not enough in itself. You also have to enforce it. Laws are made in order to minimize crimes and not as guarantees that the crime will never take place again. And allowing some fool who got fired, can't get laid, suddenly found God and trying to make up for years of sinning or is salty for whatever other reason to buy firearms is far from minimizing the probability of **** like this happening.
But again, the guns are already out there.
There's more guns in America then there are Americans.
What percentage of assault rifle owners would turn in their guns if they were made illegal? 50%? 60%? Let's say 99%, which is highly unlikely, 1% would still mean there are thousands of assault rifles still out there. In some states it's perfectly legal at the moment to sell your assault rifle to someone else privately.
So what of those? In some states you don't have to register your firearm after purchasing it privately. That includes assault rifles.
Please believe, if there was a ban on its way, a lot of people would be scurrying behind the scenes to purchase 'em under the radar.
By making those rifles illegal, we'd just be expanding the black market and making those weapons expensive. Sure the average Joe (or Mohmmad
) won't have the dough to pony up for such weapons buuuuttt someone will.
Organized terror cells for example. Not unlike the one that attacked the Bataclan.
So my question is this, how much can gun prohibition at this point really help? In my eyes it could potentially do far more harm than good.