I'll try to keep this short and sweet as I've already been writing about the NRA today, but this latest piece from ThinkProgress is worth the read. It turns out that Missouri had a background check law in place for all gun sales, including private sales, i.e. those falling through the cracks in the private sale or 'gun show' loophole.
The consequences of repealing this law in 2007 (how many guesses will you need as to who got it repealed?) were simple, but deadly for the people of Missouri: about a 25% spike in gun homicide, even as gun violence declined in the rest of the country.
The ThinkProgress article explains how researchers tied the change in homicide rates to this law being repealed, which doesn't seem an easy task at first glance.
Normally it’s very hard to ascribe changes in homicide rates to any one particular factor, but Webster and his co-workers found strong evidence to support the idea that the repeal of the permit-to-purchase law was the cause. They did a careful analysis of the kind of guns used by criminals in Missouri from 2007-2011, finding an extraordinary increase in the percentage of “young” (meaning recently purchased) guns used in crime entirely at odds with the broader national trend. This would suggest that, without background checks to worry about, it was easier for criminals to get new guns. The fact that this surge in criminals getting new guns coincided with a sharp increase in the gun homicide rate gives us strong reason to believe that the repeal of the background check law directly led to a 25 percent increase in the homicide rate.
This data represents blood shed for the sake of the NRA and its desire to deregulate gun violence.
From 1999 through 2007, Missouri’s age-adjusted homicide rate was relatively stable, fluctuating around a mean of 4.66 per 100,000 population per year. In 2008, the first full year after the permit-to-purchase licensing law was repealed, the age-adjusted firearm homicide rate in Missouri increased sharply to 6.23 per 100,000 population, a 34 percent increase. For the post-repeal period of 2008-2010, the mean annual age-adjusted firearm homicide rate was 5.82, 25 percent above the pre-repeal mean.
Looking back at the lobbying efforts of the NRA-ILA, it's just too easy to show the
NRA in January of 2007, working to repeal this background check law...
State Representative Brian Munzlinger (R-1) has introduced NRA-supported House Bill 462, a measure that would repeal Missouri’s outdated and duplicative permit to acquire a handgun (PTA) law. Missouri is among a minority of states that still maintains a permitting system for handgun purchases and transfers. HB462 would remove this unnecessary burden for law-abiding gun owners and relieve them from this intrusion into their privacy.
...and, of course, they are still busy now, trying to rally their troops against the current push to establish universal background checking. The same background checks that
NRA members have been shown to support. The same background checks that
Wayne LaPierre once supported after Columbine. Now
the NRA is hard at work, trying to defeat not just us, but its own membership.
At a gun show in the Virginia suburbs this weekend the NRA's lobbying arm set up a booth to lobby against the gun control measures being pushed by the White House. Prominently displayed at the booth were two signs – one opposing the bill being pushed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, that would ban military style assault weapons and the other was against imposing universal background checks saying they "would not be universal."
NRA officials handed out a flyer titled: "NO to 'Universal' Background Checks" saying "While banning guns and magazines is being actively promoted by the anti-gunners, the criminalization of private firearm transfers is the centerpiece of their anti-Second Amendment efforts. This is part of a strategy to chip away at our Second Amendment rights under the guise of being 'reasonable.'"
Wrong side of history, fellas. We ask this often enough about war, but who will be the last person to die for the NRA's mistake? After all this time, this flip-flopping, resisting everyone...does it stretch being charitable too much, to even call it a mistake and not the willful sacrifice of Americans on the altar of gun devotion?