Canadian Politics Today

So why would any aspiring mass murderer turn in their weapon and why would they give a **** about any law that says they can't use it?

That’s a very short-sighted view on what gun control does Wilber. 

For example, banning automatic weapons doesn’t take them out of the hands of criminals, either...   so why not let law abiding gun owners have fun at the range with a full auto? 

If you consider that they are nearly impossible to get illegally because they are not available legally, then gun control measures actually make sense.  You can’t just look at one measure and say “the criminals will ignore it”.  No sh!t...  of course they will.  But if you look at the larger view where these guns will slowly get harder and harder for criminals to come by, then it makes sense.

Santaella-Tenorio's study (co-authored with Columbia professors Magdalena Cerdá and Sandro Galea, as well as the University of North Carolina's Andrés Villaveces) examined roughly 130 studies that had been conducted in 10 different countries. Each of those 130 studies had looked at some specific change in gun laws and its effect on homicide and/or suicide rates. Most of them looked at law changes in the developed world, such as the US, Australia, and Austria, while a few looked at gun laws in developing countries, specifically Brazil and South Africa.

This isn't, then, a study that compiled its own original data on one specific gun law. It's actually more valuable than that: It's telling us what all the different studies on individual laws say when you examine them put together.

So what do Santaella-Tenorio et al. conclude? First, and most importantly, that gun violence declined after countries pass a raft of gun laws at the same time: "The simultaneous implementation of laws targeting multiple firearms restrictions is associated with reductions in firearm deaths," the study finds.

This finding doesn't highlight one specific law, like an assault weapon ban, in isolation. There were "so many different kinds of laws," Santaella-Tenorio told me, that it was hard to make good international comparisons on every specific kind of gun restriction.

https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11120184/gun-control-study-international-evidence