U.S. Budget and Economy

Did the Assault Weapons Ban Work? As noted in this article , the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut has brought calls to reinstate an assault weapons ban like the one that expired in 2004. Following is an excerpt of a round table discussion of the shooting on the December 16th edition of This Week With George Stephanopoulos : WILL: In 1996, a man went into a gym class in Scotland, killed 16 5- and 6-year-olds and the teacher. A few years ago in Norway, a young -- deranged young man killed, what, 69 people on an island, mostly teenagers. Connecticut has among the toughest gun laws in this country. Didn't help. Scotland and Norway have very tough gun laws. Didn't help. So... STEPHANOPOULOS: Didn't stop, but it does lessen the occasion of violence, doesn't it? WILL: Yeah, why don't... EDWARDS: And, George, since Columbine, there have been 181 of these school shootings. WILL: We did -- remember, we did -- we did have a ban -- we did hav...

I concluded a prior post with the following statement: As I mentioned, I am yet to find a single economic study that purports to show evidence that any income tax cut has ever paid for itself. If anyone who reads this should know of one, please leave a comment with a link to that study. Thanks. I did receive a couple of replies to that request but neither of them focused on income tax cuts in the United States. One focused on capital gains tax cuts and the other focused on countries with relatively weak tax authorities where tax cuts might increase compliance (like Russia). In any case, I replied to both. I also have not found an economic study that shows an income tax cut paying for itself from any other source. However, I am continuing to search for such a study and have posted links to any related information that I've found at this link . I believe that only one of those links is to a study that purports to show a tax cut that paid for itself. It is a paper published b...