Study: Expanded Background Checks Don’t Lower Mass Shooting Rate

A study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found expanding background checks does nothing to lower the mass shooting rate.

Ironically, Democrats react to mass shooting tragedies by pushing expanded background checks as a solution.

For example, on February 14, 2020, the second anniversary of the heinous Parkland high school shooting, Sen. Chris Coons’ (D) campaign fundraised and pushed expanded background checks as a way to prevent future attacks.

But the Johns Hopkins study found that expanded background checks are not “associated with lower rates of fatal mass shootings.”

The same study also found that “assault weapon” bans do not reduce the rate of such shootings.

On September 14, 2014, Breitbart News pointed to a New York Times’ report showing the very term “assault weapons” was a phrase Democrats made up in the 1990s as part of their effort to create a political category of firearms, which they could then ban in the hopes of touting crime-reducing policies.

According to the NYT, America was “suffering from a spike in gun crime…in the early 1990s” so “Democrats created and banned [an entire] category of guns.”

The ban lasted from 1994 to 2004 and although crime fell during that time, a “detailed study found no proof” the decline was due to the ban.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.