(This cartoon is from the blog called Nasty Jack.)One would have thought the evidence was already clear. The United States has nearly one gun for every man, woman, and child in the country -- far more than any other civilized nation. And the United States leads all other developed nations in the number of gun deaths each year, averaging more than 30,000 gun deaths a year. To a reasonable person, that first fact is obviously the cause of the second.
But the NRA, on behalf of the gun manufacturers, has spent millions of dollars to convince Americans that just the opposite is true -- that the more guns there are in a society, the safer that society is. It's a ridiculous argument and is not supported by any facts (but just the lies and propaganda of the NRA and right-wing gun lovers), but it has been effective -- probably because gun owners love their guns and are willing to accept any specious argument that justifies that love.
Now there is a new study that exposes the NRA lie. Researchers will soon public the study (regarding what happened in Missouri when restrictions on gun ownership were removed) in the Journal of Urban Health. Here is how the BBC describes the study:
Researchers claim a new study provides some of the most compelling evidence yet for tighter gun controls in the US. The team followed the consequences of the State of Missouri repealing its permit-to-purchase handgun law in 2007. The law had required purchasers to be vetted by the local sheriff and to receive a license before buying a gun. Reporting soon in the Journal of Urban Health, the researchers will say that the repeal resulted in an immediate spike in gun violence and murders. The study links the abandonment of the background check to an additional 60 or so murders occurring per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012. "Coincident exactly with the policy change, there was an immediate upward trajectory to the homicide rates in Missouri," said Prof Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. "That upward trajectory did not happen with homicides that did not involve guns; it did not occur to any neighbouring state; the national trend was doing the opposite – it was trending downward; and it was not specific to one or two localities – it was, for the most part, state-wide," he told BBC News. The team said it took account of changes that occurred in policing levels and incarceration rates, trends in burglaries, and statistically controlled for other possible confounding factors such as shifts in unemployment and poverty. What was stark, added Prof Webster, was the rise in the number of handguns that subsequently found their way into the hands of criminals. The team counted a doubling of handguns shortly after sale being recovered from scenes of crimes or from criminals. The crazy part of all this is that no one in either party is advocating taking guns away from law-abiding citizens in this country. All that has been proposed is reasonable laws that will keep guns out of the hands of criminals (and others who have shown themselves to be dangerous). Laws that the Supreme Court have already ruled are constitutional, and not a violation of Second Amendment rights.
I am a progressive, but that does not mean I want guns banned, or taken away from law-abiding citizens. I support the Constitution, including the Second Amendment (which does gives individuals the right to own firearms). But the Second Amendment is not absolute (just like free speech and other rights are not necessarily absolutes). There are those in our society who have demonstrated they cannot be trusted to own a gun (criminals and the dangerously mentally ill). Can't we at least pass laws that won't allow these people to legally purchase a gun. As the study discussed above shows, these laws do work to save lives.
