As advocates of gun control reel back from the recent federal court decision upholding the Second Amendment in the District of Columbia, many may be tempted to grab desperately for a novel argument for continued regulation: that it makes people feel better. Because careful research has debunked most claims of lower crime rates and fatalities in communities with strict gun control, activists have resorted to shouting what used to be merely talking points, substituting volume for validity. Hasn’t worked. So here comes the psychological angle :
Jack Riley, a policing and public safety analyst for the Rand Corp. think tank, said overturning the D.C. law would not have an impact on what he called the most frequent kind of crime and frequent kind of handgun violence in the district – “individuals who are deeply embedded in their criminal careers and who already have access to the black market in firearms.”
Riley conceded, however, that if the court ruling is upheld, there will be a psychological effect.
“Having a 30-year-old law overturned does unmoor people,” he said. “Because of how long the law has been in effect, it makes people pause and feel like a valuable tool is taken away, even though an objective evaluation of the impact of that tool shows that there is no strong evidence either way on its effectiveness.”