It seems to me that these citywide gun bans are as ineffective as many other gun policies are for reducing gun crime. It is extremely difficult to legislate or regulate guns when there is an active black market and a huge stock of existing guns. When the people who value guns the most are the ones who use them in the drug trade, there is next to nothing you can do to keep the guns out of their hands.
My view is that we should not be making policies about gun ownership, because they simply don’t work. What seems to work is harshly punishing people who use guns illegally.
For instance, if you commit a felony with a gun, you get a mandatory five-year add-on to your prison sentence. Where this has been done there is some evidence gun violence has declined (albeit with some substitution towards crimes being done with other weapons).
These sorts of laws are attractive for many reasons. First, unlike other gun policies, they work. Second, they don’t impose a cost on law abiding folks who want to have guns. null
