What Does Effective Gun Control Mean?

The massacre at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California which claimed the lives of a dozen people on Wednesday night has spawned calls for more "effective gun control". One of those making such a call is Helaine Olen of The Washington Post. (Full disclosure: We follow each other on Twitter, have occasionally exchanged messages and she has also imparted useful advice. So if she sees this I hope she takes these remarks in the spirit they are intended.):

It’s tempting to look for other causes. Many of us likely feel otherwise helpless. Gun violence occurs despite the fact that poll after poll shows that most Americans support significantly increased restrictions on gun ownership. But there is one horrifying massacre after another, and only, at best, small changes are made. Too many politicians remain under the thumb of the National Rifle Association. It took Parkland get the Florida legislature to pass laws that mandate background checks on gun purchasers and ban people younger than 21 from buying guns altogether. Tuesday’s elections did not change much. Yes, a number of gun control advocates scored victories, notably Lucy McBath (D), who defeated NRA-endorsed Rep. Karen Handel (R) in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. But in Florida, the mass organizing by the Parkland students was not able to prevent NRA-backed Rick Scott (R) and Ron DeSantis (R) from apparently winning their elections for the Senate and the governor’s office, respectively.

As for President Trump, he spent weeks talking up a fictional threat from a caravan of desperate immigrants, and rails against “American carnage,” while refusing to acknowledge the seriousness of the ongoing homegrown and all too real and horrifying threat of our lack of effective gun control. On Thursday morning he tweeted, “God bless all of the victims and families of the victims.” This is a failure of politics and morality. The time for bromides and excuses is long past. This is no way to live — or, increasingly, die.

Olen laments "our lack of effective gun control." Yet she curiously omits the fact that California has the strictest gun control measures in the country with more measures to take effect in 2019. Yet based on the alleged perpetrator's history, none of these measures would have prevented what happened the other night with perhaps the possible exception of the police requesting a gun violence restraining order. But there is no guarantee police would have intervened any more than mental health professionals who had previously dealt with the alleged perpetrator.

So, in a sense, Olen might be correct in stating that this country has a "lack of effective gun control". But what does "effective gun control" mean? Olen doesn't define what this entails. It would be useful to know what measures, if any, she has in mind.

For all of President Trump's demagoguery, former President Obama's default response on guns was to say he "can't sit around and do nothing". It isn't a question of doing nothing. Something is being done. It's just that something doesn't work.

I'm not a NRA member. I don't want a gun and I'm not stopping anyone from implementing gun control. Implement all the gun control measures you like up to and including the repeal of the Second Amendment. I strongly suspect gun control advocates won't be happy with the results and will still lament the "lack of effective gun control." The War on Guns will be no more successful than the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs or the War on Terror.