I appreciate the framing, and I agree that keeping guns out of dangerous hands is an important goal. But 'common sense' has become a euphemism that obscures what's actually being proposed, and the track record of gun control in reducing crime is poor.

There are already over 20,000 federal, state, and local gun laws in the United States. It is already illegal for felons, domestic abusers, people with mental health adjudications, illegal drug users, and those under restraining orders to possess firearms. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) processed over 31.5 million checks in 2022.

The enforcement gap is enormous. Federal firearms prosecutions declined about 25% between 2004 and 2020, according to Syracuse University's TRAC database. In cities like Chicago, repeat gun offenders are regularly released on low bail. If existing laws were vigorously enforced, it would do more to reduce gun crime than any new legislation.

The empirical evidence on gun control effectiveness is weak. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's own research on state-level gun laws found mixed results, with many policies showing no significant impact on homicide rates. The 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban was studied by the DOJ and found to have no measurable effect on gun violence.

Meanwhile, defensive gun uses are significant. The CDC and National Research Council estimated between 500,000 and 3 million defensive gun uses per year in the United States — dwarfing the approximately 45,000 annual gun deaths (two-thirds of which are suicides).

The 'nobody's trying to take your guns' claim is contradicted by prominent politicians. Beto O'Rourke said 'Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15.' Multiple state legislatures have passed or proposed mandatory buyback programs. When the next policy always involves more restrictions and never enforcement of existing law, skepticism is rational.

I support fixing the background check system, enforcing existing laws, and addressing the mental health crisis. Those are genuine common-sense approaches.