[runsWphotons]

"Strict laws and licensing requirements mean nothing if it is still trivial to gain access."

So have more police to enforce the laws? Why is there this belief that increasing police cannot do anything? Again, I bet this works and that DC has lower crime during the period the NG is there. It is empirical, let's see.

[cthalupa]

Gun smuggling is not the kind of crime that national guardsman standing around looking menacing stops. This is the sort of work detectives and specialized units do. Specialized surveillance, physical and digital, informants, etc. People taking plea deals in exchange for additional info.

How would a military force without the training or skillset required to do this help? Without the community knowledge? Without the contacts in it?

The issue isn't whether or not more (and better trained) police would help - they almost certainly would. But that is different from deploying the national guard.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1805161115 https://www.csis.org/analysis/sending-national-guard-dc-wron...

The other problem is that even if crime rates are reduced, that is one statistic in a vacuum - how much damage does it do to public perception of the police? We know it does - see above. What incidents might occur from the lack of training the NG has in policing civilians? What damages does it do to the fundamental freedoms within the country?

[runsWphotons]

What fundamental freedoms are people in DC going to lose? See my other comment---I think this is much less intrusive on civil liberties than adding more surveillance.

National Guardsmen may not find many guns if they arent searching people, but people will think twice about using them with guardsmen standing around. They will get into and escalate altercations where guns might be used less. There are plenty of prior cases where more policing has reduced crime like this, and DC was not doing enough, so this is going to be tried. If the police decide to work together with them enthusiastically, then even more can be done with the extra manpower.

I don't think public perception of police will change much, and anyway it always hovers around 50% confidence in surveys.