How do we know gun laws don’t work when we can’t study them?

How do you know, Matthew Hoy? (“Pushback against ‘war’ on guns,” Aug 21.)

You say the new law “is sure to be a burden,” although it has yet to be clarified by the legislative/executive branches and interpreted by the courts.

You claim definitely: “In fact, these new laws will not stop a single instance of ‘gun violence’ … They’ll never affect a single murderer.”

How do you know? The semi-automatic Glock used to shoot Gabby Giffords had a 33 bullet clip versus 10; that’s 23 additional kill-shots. The Black Panthers were “copwatching” neighborhoods in 1973 when open-carry was banned; move to Texas and go pack-heat in bars.

President Barack Obama “commuted” (not “pardoned”) sentences involving Federal, not state, mandatory-minimums; as for your Nebraska example, blame their legislature.

You say our Legislature doesn’t like residents like Kim Rhode, but she’s said the Second Amendment is also there “to defend ourselves against our own government.”

Would you then argue that the feeling’s mutual?

For the past 20 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been prevented from studying gun violence as a health issue, so instead of just treating gun rights as absolute, let’s find out which laws work and which don’t, then we can know definitively.

This story was originally published September 1, 2016 at 8:47 PM with the headline "How do we know gun laws don’t work when we can’t study them?."