We have had an assault weapons ban and it worked...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/15/its-time-to-bring-back-the-assault-weapons-ban-gun-violence-experts-say/
= new reply since forum marked as read
For reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with gun-control laws and everything to do with being able to have and advance environmentalism and women's rights. Now that culture-war gun-control attempts have given us a Repube president, a Repube House, a Repube Senate, and 2/3rds of state governorships and legislatures that are Repube, we can't advance our agenda. And things are starting to suck again.
Birth control gave women control over their reproduction in the late 60's. Environmental regulation took brain-damaging poisons (particularly airborne lead from gasoline) out of the air in the early 70's. Kids born after these events were more likely to be wanted, in families that could take care of them adequately, and less likely to have lead poisoning, which in short makes you violent, dumb, and shortsighted. These kids began to reach maturity in the late 80's... and that's when the crime rate began to drop. Fewer criminals entered the profession!
Even as the homicide rate halved, though, something else was happening. The vast bulk of homicides are single-victim incidents, but multiple-victim occurrences began to increase somewhat. Mass killings, being somewhat rare (statistically speaking) show a lot of year-to-year variation, at least in the time period studied.
You're also ignoring the fact that when the AWB was in effect, people were buying "almost assault weapons", or the same model of gun with "assault weapon" features removed. And the assault weapons bought before the ban were still in circulation; the bans were on sales of NEW guns only.
