Snopes included excerpts from at least two peer reviewed studies directly on topic that seem to contradict your contention....why dismiss it offhand?

In a peer-reviewed paper published by American Law and Economics Review in 2012, researchers Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University found that in the decade following the NFA, firearm homicides (both suicides and intentional killings) in Australia had dropped significantly:

In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth (and nearly halved the number of gun-owning households). Using differences across states, we test[ed] whether the reduction in firearms availability affected homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise [somewhere between 35% and 50%].

Similarly, Dr. David Hemenway and Mary Vriniotis of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found in 2011 that the NFA had been “incredibly successful in terms of lives saved”:

For Australia, the NFA seems to have been incredibly successful in terms of lives saved. While 13 gun massacres (the killing of 4 or more people at one time) occurred in Australia in the 18 years before the NFA, resulting in more than one hundred deaths, in the 14 following years (and up to the present), there were no gun massacres.

The NFA also seems to have reduced firearm homicide outside of mass shootings, as well as firearm suicide. In the seven years before the NFA (1989-1995), the average annual firearm suicide death rate per 100,000 was 2.6 (with a yearly range of 2.2 to 2.9); in the seven years after the buyback was fully implemented (1998-2004), the average annual firearm suicide rate was 1.1 (yearly range 0.8 to 1.4). In the seven years before the NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate per 100,000 was .43 (range .27 to .60) while for the seven years post NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate was .25 (range .16 to .33)

Additional evidence strongly suggests that the buyback causally reduced firearm deaths. First, the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback. Second, firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita fell proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates.

Are you calling them liars?

I actually agree with you mostly, but you're not gonna like it.

One thing I will point out though - "I just don't connect gun regulations as an effective solution to mass murder."

We have data on this. Take Australia. In the 21 years leading up to Port Arthur and that massacre itself, which triggered the nation into heavily regulating guns, there were 16 mass murders of four or more people, totaling 137 murders. Since then, there have been 12, with a total of 76 murders. This despite there being population growth.

Violent crime rate has dropped from 1996 to now, mainly from reductions in robbery and a small drop in homicide rates.

There is very clear evidence that if most guns are removed from circulation, there are very real and likely benefits when it comes to reducing violent crime in general and murder.

I'm a political moderate and pragmatic. I go with what works. Don't care how liberal or conservative the solution is. I'm never in favor of regulation that is ineffective at solving problems.

And to that end, I'm against most gun control measures. I'm on board with banning assault weapons, fully automatic weapons, armor piercing bullets, but most gun control things like psychiatric evaluations, universal background checks? No.
Why? Because societal models we know that provided real progress on problems seemed to suggest one thing - it's the prevalence of guns that is the problem. If you make it marginally harder to buy guns by things like...

Three day waiting periods
Universal background checks
Psychiatric evaluations

They don't work. Banning guns works, though. It's worked time and time again. Australia, Britain, over and over and over, if guns lose prevalence, violence, murder, etc. decrease significantly.

At some point, society has to decide that giving up guns is worth it. But until that time, "common sense" gun control is a waste of time, and I quite frankly think it might do real effective gun control measures harm because when nothing gets better from these mild measures, they're going to point that out.

Banning 3rd party mods that increase rate of fire actually seems to be getting bipartisan support in congress, with their NRA overlords publicly giving the green light.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lasvegas-shooting/nra-backs-bump-stocks-regulations-after-las-vegas-massacre-idUSKBN1CA0X6

I'm guessing since gun manufacturers, represented by the NRA, aren't in the bump stock business, they don't really want to suffer from the bad press caused by a related but separate industry.

I just hope congress has the balls to also ban the resale of existing rapid fire mods, not just the sale of new ones.

Hmmmm...but it's pretty exclusively a right wing position that ANY regulation on firearms is inconceivable, and Republicans exclusively are responsible for those modifications, like bump stocks, something he used to make at least one gun rapid fire, being legal. They also allowed the assault weapons ban to expire, allowing him to legally purchase up to 40 easily converted military style rifles. In fact, they were about to make silencers much easier to get, which would have increased the mayhem by giving him longer to shoot before people realized what was happening, but held back because of the massacre.

....soooooo...you do have to defend the availability of automatic guns, because you vote for and support the people that keep them easily available and want to make it easier....assuming you aren't really Dimitri from Moscow.

Not much known about him yet, not political, not religious, just a rich retired gambler according to his family.

embarassingly, I'm kind of intrigued; I think it has a Texas Chainsaw Massacre / Evil Dead quality about it

I was also thinking during the preview that it was pretty amazing that they killed off Danny Trejo so quickly and later came to the conclusion that it's probably because they couldn't afford the budget and that's Danny Trejo money which probably isn't alot compared to say Tom Hanks.

Oh certainly, there are definitely glaring flaws with Rogue One.

The biggest problem for me was how every character conveniently dies IMMEDIATELY as soon as their narrative purpose is done with. And strangely, every character seems completely ready to die in a way that makes the deaths fairly laughable.

Saw: "I'm gonna stare out this window and not even try to escape."

Bodhi: "I'm gonna close my eyes and not even try to toss that thermal detonator back out of the shuttle."

Baze: "Welp, my best friend is dead so I'm just going to Leroy Jenkins those Deathtroopers."

They missed major dramatic opportunities for each character death. Think "Saving Private Ryan" where each character death is meaningful. Caparzo disobeys a command to do something decent and gets himself killed. Wade dies because Tom Hanks wanted to do the right thing and clear the machine gun nest. Fish dies because Upham is too cowardly to climb the steps and fight. And none of those guys resigned themselves to death--they all wanted desperately to live.

A couple of other things that bothered me about Rogue One:

Why did Admiral Raddus take Princess Leia--a Galactic Senators daughter--into a major battle with the Empire, one which most Rebels were convinced was a trap designed to draw out the fleet?

Why didn't Vader just Force pull the Death Star plans out of the escaping rebels before massacring them all?

Why did the Death Star "miss" Scarif base and hit the ocean instead despite them showing it had pinpoint accuracy when blowing up Jedha?

All that being said, TFA disappointed me big time. It was just trying waaaaaaaay too hard to evoke the original trilogy. If I wanted to watch the original trilogy again I'd, you know, watch the original trilogy. And don't even get me started on Kylo Ren. I haven't wanted to punch a character in the face so hard since whiny Anakin from Attack of the Clones.

EDIT: To keep this on topic, I'm annoyed that Plinket didn't point out the actual flaws in the movie and instead focused on the "they didn't explain the Force" bullshit.

You're kidding, right?
Do I have to make a list? On every continent white people visited (if you can call showing up and not really leaving a visit) we fucked up the lives of a good portion of the people living there.
Sure, mankind has always been cruel, in every corner of the earth. However, white people are to murder, theft and slavery what Coca Cola is to refreshing diabeeetus (yes, that's how it's spelled). A fucking international enterprise whose traces can be found everywhere. On every fucking continent.
I hope we can agree on that. Otherwise, here's a short list: Gippsland Massacres, Nagasaki, Opium Wars, My Lai Massacre, fucking Iraq, Crusades, Apartheid, Herero and Namaqua genocide, that whole Columbus mess, Trail Of Tears and transatlantic slave trade (because why the fuck not?). Oh, my bad, I forgot the freaking Holocaust and starting 2 World Wars.
Who does this? Who? White people, that's who. Europeans and their descendants.
Would you like to argue that level of evil is genetic? I won't.
It's cultural. We europeans (and later our emigrated offspring) always thought we're better than everybody else, we had god on our side (and the Pope agreed!). Probably a leftover from the Roman Empire. And that's why everywhere we go, we steal, murder or occupy the shit out of every place. No other collection of ethnic groups has so much blood on their hands and it's not because we're worse DNA constructs than the others. All humans are capable of evil, it just takes a certain way of thinking to go that far.
Thankfully, we wrecked our own continent so badly during WW2, that we finally started to improve our ways. But here's the problem: we just started. We're far from being done.
Orban, LePen, Farage, Putin, Petry and last but not least Trump.

@newtboy
If the locals were already doing their utmost legally to halt the invasion in the 30's, it was clear the immigrants were not welcome...except by the 11%
Jews weren't the only ones relocating to Palestine you know, Arab population growth was being driven up as well. For some strange reason a lot of people were relocating en mass in between WW1 and WW2. Seems disproportionate to me to be the concerned exclusively with the Jewish ones. Doubly so given within that time frame they undoubtedly had better reasons for concern.

My Texas-California comparison stands...
Except for the holocaust part.

Here's the example you want. During the Rwandan genocide, let's pretend we saw a mass exodus of Africans seeking refuge in America. As the genocide in Rwanda was being sifted through, let's pretend that White America decided to ban all land sales to black people, and started refusing to conduct any business with black people. Let's pretend white folks even got up in arms and started committing a few massacres of Black towns and Black people did the same back in defense and retaliation. Now, while all this fighting takes place lets see it escalate to an all out war, and the black population declares independence and accepts a UN mandated solution where they keep Missippi, Alabama and Florida or something. The day after that however, America and NATO announce a joint declaration of war and the president of the USA declares that he's going to drive the Africans into the sea. Now you've got a made in America analogy.

To simplify, invaders don't get to to complain about about how the massacred natives left treat them.

Haven't you heard? Stormtroopers are deadly accurate. They just had orders in the original Star Wars not to kill anyone because it was one big fake out because a tracker was put on the Falcon.

Look how easily they took out the rebels when they captured Leia, or how many Ewoks they massacred before simply being overwhelmed.

No one made that claim, but yes, it does. I bet you had a good ol' time making mountains out of molehills over Obama's alleged birthplace, no?
The birthplace of the said assailant/asshat makes a difference to your primary statement/argument:
Syntaxed said: "Perhaps he was wrong about the people that you blokes are letting into the country? Yes? Then how come one of them, (whom you could never tell is a radical, HE HAD A WIFE AND CHILD), just killed 50 members of the LGBT community in the horrible massacre in Orlando?(which was so bad we are getting news coverage of it in LONDON)"
EDIT: This is a clear, unambiguous claim that he was an immigrant, since you seem to not comprehend your own post.

It proves that you are speaking from a position that starts with a total ignorance of or disregard for the facts in order to support factually deficient demagoguery. The asshat in question was not one of those we are "letting into the country"
According to Wiki, in the last 6 years, only 8 out of 21 terrorist attacks in the US were committed by Muslims, but 10 were committed by anti-government non-Muslim right wingers. I guess a ban on all right wing immigrants would make MORE sense?

Your reply proves that you know you have no argument to make, as you instantly discard it when challenged to chase red herrings.

So, firstly, I must agree with @ChaosEngine, a commencement speech is no place for political commentary. A commencement speech's purpose is to allow one who has paved a complex path through life and come out on top, or one who has overcome something great, (and) has a important lesson for those less-learned to share their knowledge, that it may be used for good.

(God that sentence is long, let me catch my virtual breath...)

Next, why, if he is to provide political commentary during a commencement speech, as so many do nowadays, does he slam Trump?

Anybody? Is it his hair? Is it his puffy little face? Is it because he looks like a pumpkin? No? Perhaps its because he is a disaster waiting to happen, because that seems to be the general sentiment from many people who are allowed to speak their minds en-masse nowadays...

But how is Trump worse than Clinton? Hmmm? Perhaps there are buried rape cases THAT WERE MADE PUBLIC BTW, in Trump's past? No?

Perhaps making billions of dollars FROM ONE MILLION is just inherently evil? Hmmm, no?

Okay, that Hairdo, it must burn a hole in the Ozone layer wherever he walks... Or flames must flower at his feet, as lotus flowers did for the Buddha? NO?

Perhaps he was wrong about the people that you blokes are letting into the country? Yes? Then how come one of them, (whom you could never tell is a radical, HE HAD A WIFE AND CHILD), just killed 50 members of the LGBT community in the horrible massacre in Orlando?(which was so bad we are getting news coverage of it in LONDON)

Hmmm, maybe electing someone who actually admits there is a problem, destroying political correctness, and being damned with the "established order" which supposedly keeps you Americans safe isnt such a bad idea...

Maybe electing a Woman with a hideous blot of a record, and a long standing member of said establishment is one such bad idea...

Some bits it glosses over :

Puppet dictatorship is basically a description of every US and Soviet backed b-list nation on earth back then. The fact that it's a puppet state shouldn't be used to imply anything.
For example, the U.S.S.R. had modernization programs for its satellite states, building power plants, roads, hospitals, universities, etc, in an attempt to fast forward development and catch up with the west asap. They also did this while spouting secular rhetoric.
In a general attempt to undermine soviet efforts (*both sides tried to contain each other's influence world wide), the U.S. looked for any groups within the U.S.S.R. satellite nations that would be an 'in' for U.S. power/influence. For Afghanistan, this was the people most offended by the U.S.S.R.'s [secular] agenda, and most likely to make good on foreign anti-soviet backing - the religious Jihadists. Everyone knew very well what it would mean for the local people if Jihadists took over Afghanistan - but at the time, the soviets were considered a bigger problem than Jihadists (possibility of nuclear annihilation), so better to have Jihadists in power than soviets.

Also, Assad's release of prisoners was officially part of an amnesty for political prisoners - something the people and foreign groups were asking for.
Saying that Assad tolerated AQ or Isis is misleading. These groups gained power during the Arab spring, when a large portion of the civilian population wanted a new government, but lacked the military power to force change. Militants stepped into the situation by /graciously/ offering their military strength, in exchange for economic/resource/political support to help make it happen. After a short while, these groups coopted the entire effort against Assad. Once they were established, they simply put the people under their boot, effectively replacing Assad with something even worse within the regions they held. Assad lacked/lacks the military power and support to expel the militant groups, so they fight to a stalemate. But a stalemate is by no means tolerance.
One similarity that Syria has to Afghanistan, is that the anti-government kernel within the population that birthed the revolt, did so for anti-secular reasons. In Syria's case, it was in large part people from the region that had earlier attempted an Islamist uprising during Assad's father's reign (which was put down by the government, culminating in the 'hama massacre', leaving some intense anti-government sentiment in the region).
In any case, the available choices for power in Syria are 'political dictatorship' or 'religious dictatorship'. Whoever wins, regular people lose. It's not as if regular people have the arms necessary to force anyone to listen to them. Anyone with any brains or initiative knows that their best option is neither, so they leave (hence all the refugees).

The video also omits the ambiguous alliances in the region. Early on, you had the UAE, Saudis, and Turks supporting ISIS - because an enemy of your enemy is your friend. It wasn't until ISIS started to encroach on them that they tempered their support. Turkey remains ambiguous, by some accounts being the gateway/laundromat for ISIS oil sales... because ISIS is a solution to the 'Kurdish problem' for Turkey.
If you watch some of the VICE documentaries, you can see interviews where locals on the Turkish border say that militants and arms cross form Turkey into Syria to join ISIS every night.
Then you have countries like Iran and Syria fighting ISIS, but by official accounts these countries are the west's enemy. Recently, French leadership (after the Paris bombings) has stated that they are done playing politics, and just want to get rid of ISIS in the most practical manner possible, and are willing to work with Russia and Assad to do it.

It's worth noting that ISIS' main enemy/target is 'non Sunni Islam'. U.S./Europe tend to only mention ISIS attacks on their persons/places, and it leaves western people thinking that ISIS is against the west - but in fact the west is merely an afterthought for ISIS. For every one attack on a western asset/person, there are countless attacks on Shia, etc.

-scheherazade

Everything could be avoided by seeing Dude Bro Party Massacre 3. I'm drunk but I'll avoid any hangover watching that.

He could have avoided this problem if he had only seen Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 instead.