Well sure but the gang/drug activity that causes the abject most of it isn’t exactly done by 13-17yo kids with legally acquired handguns. Them having the guns is illegal, the guns are usually stolen and passed around, they’re using them to protect themselves from the other dudes nearby who want to steal the territory they use to sell illegal drugs, often someone gets shot in these disputes, and then the gang avenges that dead member, the rivals avenge that avenging, and before you know it some neighborhoods have been on that cycle since the 80s to the point where nobody who was there when it started was even alive but the war continues. Simply making guns “harder to get” doesn’t help, they’re already getting them illegally and won’t be going through the proper channels no matter how hard you make them. Tinfoil hat time: There’s even been suspiscion that the government is even supplying them in some instances (which if you’re aware of Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious, and the accusations they did the same with crack in the 80s with the whole Iran Contra thing, etc, isn’t that hard to believe). Beyond that there’s already over 600,000,000 guns in ~45% of the populations hands that aren’t going anywhere, even if we stopped selling guns tomorrow and stopped the feds from gifting them in hairbrained schemes, all of those would still be here and could still be stolen, used, and sold to a cousin across the country for $150 to be used and moved again, nothing changes except now people who would do it legal now can’t.

We’d need to address the problems at the root to solve anything, more opportunities for lower income people that don’t involve the life, social programs and such, deal with the wealth inequality, and the general hopelessness which helps make gangs an attractive “solution” (it isn’t one but it looks like it might be before they join) to the problem (and all that would likely help mass/school shootings too), and the controversial one: make drugs somewhat legal to use/buy and undercut their sales, sell pure safe® stuff at a good price and something like safe injection sites and encourage AA/NA or equivalent. Sure, all of that sounds harder than getting rid of the guns (tbh I’d argue it’s easier actually, both are hard as fuck though), but it still needs to be done to solve anything.

“Making guns harder to buy” in theory is good too, but often falls apart with “how specifically.” Often suggested or even implemented ideas boil down to meaningless feature bans, as if it’s impossible to shoot someone with a fixed stock instead of an adjustable. Those will never accomplish anything besides securing votes from people who know little enough about it to believe they’re effective while not actually solving anything so you can run on the same platform next election. Other common ideas are often too easy to abuse. “Mental health checks” are in this category, how long before that gets turned around on trans people? Turns out, before we even have it for cis people lol. Thankfully gun rights groups (namely FPC and oddly the NRA, and the SRA followed later) spoke out against this and I think it won’t happen. Safe storage is cool to a point, but people still need to be able to access one quickly in case of a break in and as anyone who watches LPL knows the quick access safes are a joke. Other forms of making them harder to buy, so far, have been historically racially motivated and used as such. North Carolina recently repealed one such 104 year old Jim Crow era law requiring one to apply for a permit (granted by the Sheriff) to buy a handgun, turns out 60% of denials were to black people. Carry permits in that state and others are still used in a similar way, while being harder to deny in shall issue states they put more stringent requirements that are often overpoliced in marginalized black neighborhoods like conviction for possession of drugs (including marijuana) within X years (typically 3-5). Furthermore, with the overpolicing of those neighborhoods and the tendency to over charge black men for crimes, any laws criminalizing possession or carry of firearms disproportionately affects them, basically, laws are enforced harder and more often in Watts than Beverly Hills and this is no exception.