Actually, the data shows that the assault weapons ban of 1994 was associated with a decrease in mass shooting deaths and the number of incidents

Correlation from causation aside, for this to have any real significance, there would need to be a drop in mass shooting counts.

That aside, your own citation shows any change in deaths is questionable at best - it looks as if the average may have even increased, by the included graph.

It also seems to pretend that _merely banning the sales of more “assault weapons” would have nullified the impact of existing assault weapons.

However, after the ban expired in 2004, there was an almost immediate and steep rise in mass shooting deaths.

Again, correlation from causation aside, for this to have any real meaning there would have to be only one changing factor… and the trend would have had to been consistent with a near-elimination of the count of events.

Can you truly think of no other changes? No, say, incredible spike in the media glorifying and sensationalizing such events, inadvertently promoting them as a means of getting violent retribution as one commits suicide?

It boils down to this: was there any direct scaling of such values with the actual count of owned “assault weapons”? Of course not.

It is important to note that many additional factors may contribute to the shifting frequency of these shootings, such as changes in domestic violence rates, political extremism, psychiatric illness, firearm availability and a surge in sales, and the recent rise in hate groups

Wow. So, you dilute the value of your own correlation by highlighting factors known to be common underlying issues, yet double-down on “suggest” and “decrease”.