On April 3rd, 2018 a woman by the name of Nasim Najafi Aghdam entered YouTube's San Bruno office and opened fire injuring three people before taking her own life. Almost as quickly as the shots were reported, social media was abuzz with sarcastic retorts on the effectiveness of gun control. 
Whenever a shooting takes place in a state with strict guns laws, comments such as these litter social media, their authors proud to point out the fact that shootings can happen anywhere. In this regard, the people who write these comments are not wrong; stringent gun laws will not stop every shooting, large-scale or otherwise. They do, however, ignore two facts that are vital when discussing the effectiveness of gun control - frequency of such events, and loss of life.
Of the ten states with the highest frequency of gun murders per-capita, eight are strongly conservative, with gun laws ranging from lax to practically non-existent.There are two outliers on the list; Maryland, whose gun laws remain somewhat moderate, and whose cities face a similar problem to the one present in the other outlier, Illinois. In Illinois, one of the most frequently referenced states by opponents to gun control, gun crime is overwhelmingly fueled by illegally owned weapons, a majority of which have been purchased out of state.
However, this is an issue most gun advocates have not yet addressed; and despite their claims, it is important to note that Illinois is not, in fact, the murder capital of America-- that title belongs to Louisianna.
And in regards to the loss of life, the numbers do speak for themselves. The most recent mass shooting in California left three injured, and while the gun used was legally purchased, it was a small magazine handgun, and likely the best the shooter could attain given California's strict gun laws.
However, it's neighbor, gun-friendly Nevada, saw the worst mass shooting in history less than a year ago. In that case, the shooter was able to legally purchase a gun capable of mowing over fifty people down from a hotel room window, with few checks in place to stop him.
The question of gun control is a complex one - one that forces those who discuss it to look at statistics, the constitution and their own morals. However, some questions being debated are not actually debatable. The fact is gun control does equate to lower rates of gun violence from legally purchased weapons; not all weapons, but gun control isn't about all weapons, it's about legal ones.
