(The Lion) — It is common after a mass shooting or assassination attempt to hear calls for more gun control, especially from the left. The attempt on President Donald Trump’s life last week was no exception. But stricter gun laws would not have prevented Saturday’s incident, one expert says.
Writing for The Federalist, John Lott Jr., who runs the Crime Prevention Research Center, said the weapons used by alleged assailant Cole Allen were purchased in California – a state gun-control advocates often cite as having the “best,” or most restrictive, gun laws.
“The attacker had a 12-gauge Mossberg Maverick 88 pump-action shotgun and an Armscor Precision .38 semi-automatic pistol. The guns were obtained from two different gun stores in California,” wrote Lott, who also authored a report referenced in a Lion article on transgender violence.
That did not stop Democrat politicians and members of the media from calling for additional restrictions. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, called for “universal, violent criminal background check[s],” despite California already enforcing such measures. While it makes a strong talking point, Lott’s research “shows that not a single mass public shooting this century would have been prevented by universal background checks, even if they had been perfectly enforced nationwide.”
Another Democrat official called for closing “lethal loopholes” on “military grade weapons,” despite no such weapons being used in the attack and California already maintaining similar bans.
Members of The View pressed Trump and the White House to embrace gun control following the attack, but Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche urged lawmakers to stand firm, arguing in favor of the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
Lott cited additional examples of gun-control groups advocating policies already in place in California, where the firearms were purchased. Even with the restrictions, the state’s “per capita rate of mass public shootings has consistently exceeded that of the rest of the country,” even by as much as 100%.
Gun-control advocates frequently criticize Texas, a pro-gun state, but Texas has a much lower mass shooting rate, Lott reported.
He also pointed to assassination trends across the Americas, noting most occur in Central and South America, where gun laws are stricter, not in North America.
All of this points to the need to advocate for policies that would actually reduce the threat of violence.
“In the aftermath of the attack, the immediate push for additional gun control once again overlooked whether the proposed policies would have addressed the circumstances at hand,” Lott concludes, emphasizing the “disconnect between policy proposals and real-world outcomes.”
More productive would be to address the left-wing “rhetoric that seems to have driven the attacker at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, rather than reiterating familiar but ineffective solutions.”
As previously reported by The Lion, left-wing violence reached its highest level in 30 years in 2025, surpassing attacks from the far right for the first time since the 1990s.
“I think we are in a very, very dangerous spot right now that could quite easily escalate into more widespread civil unrest if we don’t get a hold of it,” said one expert, who called the September assassination of Charlie Kirk a “watershed” moment.
