The article covering the "study" starts out with pure misdirection: From medicaldaily.com:
The United States has some of the most lenient gun ownership laws in the world. It also boasts one of the highest gun-related death rates of any country. Researchers from Boston University say the U.S. can cut those deaths by more than 80 percent by enacting three specific laws on a federal basis. These rules would require background checks for all ammunition and gun purchases as well as ballistic imprinting or microstamping of firearms so they leave identifiable traces when fired.Brazil, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, and South Africa have much higher "gun related" death rates than the United States. but the very term "gun related" is a propaganda term. It includes suicides, which are about two thirds of the total for the United States. When you look at total homicide and suicide rates, the U.S. is far from the top. Using the Washington post pick of 26 "developed" countries, this is what we come up with:
You can see that the U.S. is a little closer to the top than the bottom, but not by much. As a multicultural society, I would expect as much. Suicide and homicide are culturally driven, not implement driven. After all, there are a lot of people from Mexico, and other cultures in the United States.
The "study" claims that:
"Background checks for all people buying guns and ammunition, including private sales, are the most effective laws we have to reduce the number of gun deaths in the U.S."Yet two thirds of "gun deaths" are suicides. How would background checks stop them?
The other two laws touted are gun identification through ballistics, and gun identification through microstamping.
Not a single crime has been solved by the ballistic identification laws. Two of the three states where they were passed have repealed them because they were so costly and ineffective.
Not one state has implemented a microstamping law. Yet the "study" claims that microstamping and ballistic imprinting laws reduced gun related deaths by 84%.
It is complete junk science. Pure correlation causation confusion.
What the "study" authors found is that states with low numbers of gun owners are able to pass insane laws that have no effect. Because those states have low numbers of gun owners, and because "gun deaths" include suicides, they could find statistical artifacts to support their preconceived bias.
States that have more hospitals have more deaths in hospitals. That does not mean that hospitals cause the death rate to rise.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Link to Gun Watch
Morning Dean. Just wondering if the high rates in Mexico are Trump's fault? You know, angst because they'll be prevented from trespassing into the US if he wins? Just a little sarc for a Sunday morning.
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Not many guns take a picture of who is firing the gun. and who says the empty brass has to be left behind. If someone wants you dead they can make a bow and an arrow. find me a knife that will leave a imprinted identification number. or a rock that is licensed. I wonder just how much empty brass is just laying around the desert to be picked up and be reloaded? If you are careful you can take a cartridge apart and put the parts together to make a completely different bullet than what has been purchased. cast bullets are very difficult if not impossible to trace. If you recover a once fired bullet in good condition it can be reloaded and fired again, that would drive them nuts trying to identify that bullet fired the second time with a ballistics match. Marked brass can be melted down, making it very hard to identify the imprinted number. If you identify the factory loaded powder you can reload the cartridge with a different power and bullet. I think a kinetic bullet puller costs about 10 dollars. seems to me some of these people thinking up these plans don't know much about guns or ammo. then there is always the possibility of changing the barrel on the gun or like in a couple of guns I have change the cylinder. If you know how you can even change the firing pin. If you have the equipment you can even resize the bullet or trim the case. all of these things can confound bullet identification. buy a flat nose bullet and make a dum, dum out of it.
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