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I mean, I agree that a priori you can expect systemic inconveniences to have large downstream effects, sure, that's something you should always check for.
But the best way to check for that is to actually look at the data, and as far as I can tell, gun ownership rates haven't dropped in the last 20 years, despite all the measures passed in that timeframe.
It just doesn't look like any of these recent measures have actually decreased gun ownership, so I don't think the argument that they are disarming the citizenry and making them weak to tyrants holds water.
There are lots of other good arguments against these measures, just not that one, AFAICT.
This is a weird metric to focus on. Gun control measures tend to cause gun sales to spike, even as they restrict the citizen's ability to wage war.
Prior to our magazine ban going into effect I bought a bunch of magazines for guns I didn't even own, but might want to in the future.
This is not my area of expertise, but 'People buy more guns and become less able to wage war' seems inherently self-contradictory to me. Could you explain what you mean in a bit more detail?
You’re going to have a much harder time achieving fire superiority with a fixed magazine bolt action rifle than with a detachable magazine semiautomatic.
With inferior firepower, you’ll need far more men to keep the enemy ducking instead of returning fire.
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Not the individual you replied to but making things illegal and successfully restricting them neuters what people have access to, even if more people decide to pursue that thing.. Californians can own guns, but some of their options end up being rather pitiful.
Even if a gun law encourages more people to buy guns- the guns they can buy are suddenly rendered more impotent. As an extreme example, if everyone were given a musket a day before guns became impossible to buy legally from then on, more people would have guns, but people's ability to wage war would be hampered quite severely.
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The data is garbage. Most of the restrictions are going to be state level and most data is national. Most of the data is self reported surveys about a politically charged topic where people have had a strong incentive to lie since the 90s and unlike an election where you can validate something like the shy-tory effect in polling, there is no ground truth data point to calibrate against. Sales cannot distinguish a new owner from an existing owner buying their 30th firearm. (That first versus 30th is a classic example against waiting periods as implemented since they rarely/never allow someone who has already purchased a firearm previously to opt out which is nonsensical given the justifications for them.) Keep in mind also twenty years ago the AWB was still in effect, while forty years ago it didn't exist and sixty years ago the GCA didn't even exist so firearms could be mail ordered and there were no background checks then. Never mind the demographic changes over decades from urbanization and the downstream cultural effects. I'd wager that relative to sixty years ago there are far fewer gun owners per capita.
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