The “Show Me State” gets Shown
As predictably as the snake handling preacher dying of a venous snake bite, Missouri is dying of gunshot wounds: Via Atattatuk.
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.
One more prediction: This study will get about as much attention as the first clause of the 2nd Amendment.
Of course this is true, but I think we need to give up on this one. Fact is we just need to live with it. Practice duck and cover if necessary…
Just like marriage equality for homesexuals, abortions rights and legal cannabis are all but decided issues, so is this. The USA will be the gun-country. I don’t like it. The arguments for it are silly and fly in the face of evidence… but it’s a settled issue…. at least for 50 years.
You’ll feel better once you accept it.
I agree with Dorian Gray.
Gunnuttery is faith-based.
I’m even more reconciled to our fucked up status quo that you two. I just can’t resist posting some of this obviousness once in a while.
It is never posted with the idea that we could ever live in a more gun sane country (short of moving to any other industrialized country in the world.)
I always said that the sport of hunting would lose it’s allure, if some one gave the animals weaponry with which to fight back.
If we put a bounty on dead gun nuts, the NRA would disappear in a month. And bounties are totally traditionally American, aren’t they? I think even Delaware’s Constitutional Sheriff supporters once advocated in favor for them? If you don’t believe in using the totally American tradition of bounties to eradicate white scum … Just watch the movie Django.
kavips, I encourage you to try. It should be humorous. Of course, we’re the ones with all the guns, so I expect it would be pretty one sided.
Strange how the gun haters are so consistently violent yet they project their violence onto us.
There is a consistent inability to differentiate between those who practice one of the safest activities in existence (gun sports) & criminals who lack even the most fundamental amount of moral fiber.
All it would take to end this argument is for everyone to accept that some of us prefer to defend ourselves and some do not. I fully respect your decision not to carry a gun, to be married to your same sex partner or to smoke some weed. All I ask is that you also respect my decision to be armed.
Every day, hundreds of thousands of Americans will safely & legally carry a gun without harm or danger to anyone. Just like reckless drivers, those who do not follow the appropriate safety rules need to be fined and even face arrest.
Despite what you see on the news, those who legally carry a gun rarely resort to shooting anyone. In most cases, criminals won’t even hang around long enough for you to get it out of its holster.
Shooting at a car full of teenagers because they are playing music too loud or picking a fight because someone is wearing a hoodie is just as much a crime as a gang banger pulling the trigger in Wilmington- These situations need to be treated as such.
To find a solution to gun violence, it will take a united effort by those on both sides of the “gun” issue. I suggest calling a truce and everyone working toward the same goal- eliminating the ILLEGAL use of ILLEGALLY procured guns while preserving our right to LEGALLY own guns and, when necessary, carry them for personal protection.
Shorter radef16: We gun owners are all upstanding citizens until we go shoot a bunch of people, or more likely, our spouse.
Thanks for that! Very helpful.