Hey I’m not even arguing against gun regulation. Just pointing out, going to shall-issue may have very little impact. Unraveling the causes of high rates of gun violence is very complex. Vermont, of all places, had the most relaxed gun laws in the entire US until pretty recently, and it has never had Chicago-level violence, and places adjacent to it, like Canada, also didn’t suffer from any kind of weapon smuggling from Vermont. Vermont was astonishingly relaxed on gun laws. It was the first, and for a very long time the only, state in the US to allow concealed carry without a permit. In fact, permitless carry was called Vermont Carry for a long time until it started to become a thing in more states. You would expect Vermont to have shootings all the time, but it never had any such problems.
I don’t have any answers about why this is, but I only bring it up to show that there isn’t a straightforward relationship between gun violence and gun laws, the way there is between, say, smoking and lung cancer, or high speed limits and traffic accidents. Gun control supporters would like there to be such a relationship, but there isn’t. NRA supporters would like there to be a clear relationship between more guns and less crime, or more CCW and less crime, but again, there isn’t.
