Vox: Gun bans won't work

What would this accomplish? 

Even Vox points out, "Why an assault weapons ban can’t address America’s gun problem." There is no empirical evidence that banning AR-style, "assault rifles" will reduce deaths from gunfire, although Vox does say that there may be a benefit in reducing the number of deaths in mass shootings, though probably not reducing the number of mass shootings. The reason is (which Vox does not make clear) that the 5.56mm and .223-caliber round typically fired from these guns was designed to be exceptionally lethal against human beings, as I explained in some detail here.

But would such a ban make a dent in lowering America's overall homicide rate? No, and one reason is that almost all gun homicides are done with handguns, not rifles. Another reason is that the rate of gun homicides has been falling for 25 years. Since it will never reach zero, there can come a time when the rate is so low that lowering it further will basically become impossible.

Meanwhile, family members of yesterday's YouTube shooter, Nasim Aghdam, told news media that they had warned police that Nasim was dangerous.

Aghdam's brother told ABC affiliate KGTV that his family reported her missing over the weekend when she disappeared and stopped answering phone calls. The family’s concerns deepened when police said that they had located her vehicle in Mountain View, about 30 miles southeast of YouTube's headquarters, he said.

"I googled 'Mountain View' and it was close to YouTube headquarters. And she had a problem with YouTube," he told KGTV. "So I called that cop again and told him there's a reason she went all the way from San Diego to there, so she might do something. So they didn't do anything, and she got killed ... and three or four more people got hurt."

California has long had a system of Gun Violence Restraining Orders that allow police to seize guns from person after referral from an immediate family member. But there are due-process procedures and I am pretty sure that a phone call from a relative saying "she might so something" is not legally sufficient for the police to take preemptive action, and in this case the warning seems to have come too late, anyway.

Nasim used a pistol, by the way, killing no one but putting three into the hospital, one in critical condition. This datum, IMO, buttresses Vox's claim that banning AR-style rifles would lower the death toll in mass shootings, but the problem with such a ban (which Vox does acknowledge) is that there are untold millions of such rifles already in private hands, so they can't be banned.

Update: A YouTube employee at the scene tells a reporter, "I didn't have a gun on me but I wish I did."