Anyone with even a teaspoon of knowledge about statistics also knows you can select and cook data to arrive at any conclusion you like. Stories like this are cooked with the hopes of being gobbled up by those folks in the middle with no current knowledge or impression either way.
Laughable. The other side has no idea what it is talking about. The level of absolute ignorance on the anti-civil rights side is astounding.
Background checks were STILL performed. The morons think that state law trumped federal law.
[FONT=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Webster and colleagues found that the spike in murders in Missouri following the PTP law repeal only occurred for murders in Missouri committed with a firearm and was widespread across the state's counties…. [/FONT]For firearm sales by federally licensed firearm dealers, federal law requires prospective purchasers to pass a criminal background check and sellers to maintain records of the sale. But federal law and laws in most states exempt these regulations when the firearm seller is unlicensed. The researchers suggest that universal background checks and firearm purchaser licensing affect homicide rates by reducing the availability of guns to criminals and other prohibited groups.
Before you accept it, ask yourself whas the study performed honestly? Who paid for it? Did the funders have agendas?
What other studies support or conflict with this result? What, exactly does this study imply? We don't have a PTP law in Indiana. Does it mean the murder rate would decrease if we adopt such a law? Would California's Murder rate skyrocket if they adopted Indiana's gun laws. After California adopted all the nutty new laws recently, if it's true that stricter gun laws = fewer murders, we shuld expect their rates to nosedive.
One state? Why one state - Missouri? Because it seems to fit your conclusion? I believe 38 states have similar background checks - why not include all the data? Maybe it doesn't fit the preconceived conclusion?
The analyses controlled for changes in policing, incarceration, burglaries, unemployment, poverty, and other state laws adopted during the study period that could affect violent crime