> the author goes much further than that and concludes that because Australia does not provide enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis that the null hypothesis (gun control doesn't work) is therefore true
I don't think this is the claim. I think the claim is that the evidence is insufficient to merit supporting a particular policy intervention. Banning things is not without cost: there will be some economic consequences for people making the thing, and there will need to be an enforcement regime which will either increase law enforcement costs or reduce LEO time spent elsewhere, and the practical impact of that enforcement regime will, if past gun interventions are predictive, involve incarcerating a bunch more people, many or most of whom will be urban men of color, which will result in both monetary and societal costs. And if there's a buyback program, that will also be enormously expensive, and require either incurring new debt or not spending that money on some other means of life-saving.
I think it's reasonable to want to be pretty confident a particular policy intervention will work before agreeing to incur that cost, and I think the author is saying the Australia example does not constitute sufficient evidence to merit that confidence. That's not the same as saying it didn't or won't work.
"Neither nation [Australia or Britain] experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress."
But if you actually look at the data, this is simply absurd. Australia averaged one mass shooting every 18 months before the ban without about a dozen separate events. Since the ban 21 years have gone by without a mass shooting. To say that "mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress" is manifestly absurd. At the very least it requires an explanation: just how many mass shooting does she require before their total absence for over two decades can be attributed to an intervention?
I don't think this is the claim. I think the claim is that the evidence is insufficient to merit supporting a particular policy intervention. Banning things is not without cost: there will be some economic consequences for people making the thing, and there will need to be an enforcement regime which will either increase law enforcement costs or reduce LEO time spent elsewhere, and the practical impact of that enforcement regime will, if past gun interventions are predictive, involve incarcerating a bunch more people, many or most of whom will be urban men of color, which will result in both monetary and societal costs. And if there's a buyback program, that will also be enormously expensive, and require either incurring new debt or not spending that money on some other means of life-saving.
I think it's reasonable to want to be pretty confident a particular policy intervention will work before agreeing to incur that cost, and I think the author is saying the Australia example does not constitute sufficient evidence to merit that confidence. That's not the same as saying it didn't or won't work.