Wow. You are dense, man. Geez. Stricter gun laws reduce child deaths. That is a fact proven by this study. I will be perfectly honest with you, I read your argument that the study didn’t control for gangs and somehow these deaths are not worth studying and I have to tell you that you are just wrong. A life is a life. If stricter gun laws keeps guns from getting into the hands of gang members then that is a good thing. That will save the lives of thousands of kids every year. The law is there to target people who purchase weapons for illegal resale and usage. You have these burdens everyday on driving a car, making large money transfers, buying a home or a car, you name it. Background checks and iID requirements are something you do multiple times a year.
But somehow it is Nazi Germany to suggest we require them for voting. Seriously, you clearly have never purchased a firearm, or you would know the only sales of firearms not requiring background checks, etc, are limited private sales or gifts and intra family transfers. Adding such checks for ammo is clearly just designed to inconvenience lawful gunowners for no discernible benefit. And for the "party of science," LOL, dems seem very clueless when it comes to statistics and drawing inferences from random correlations. There's probably a stronger correlation between the number of lexus dealerships or the absence of fried chicken outlets and gun deaths, so should we base laws on that as well?
If you look at the supplemental material from the article, you'll see that there are 8 states that require a UBC for firearm purchases, 3 states with a UBC for ammunition purchases, and 1 state with an existing firearm identification requirement. Connecticut, Illinois, & Massachusetts are the only states that fall into 2 of these 3 categories. None fall into all 3. So assuming this was the metric the study used to determine gun law strength, they're essentially comparing these 3 states to the rest of the country. Another interesting note from the study is they mention several times that they adjusted the numbers for race, ethnicity, population, education, & poverty. But I can't find anywhere in the study where they show what these adjustments were. It's definitely an interesting study. I would've liked to see the homicide data separated from the suicide data because Connecticut, Illinois, & Massachusetts are all ranked in the top 5 of our country's lowest suicide rates. My guess is the homicide rate state comparison may be quite different.
Now we are talking. Another interesting weight would have been access to mental health care, general healthcare and educational attainment. I read the methodology and it factored each law on a point system and tested it against death rates. I didn’t see too much I had a problem with at first blush but if you want to get into it I’ll take a deeper look with you.
The study is horseshit, and politically motivated. And all of this is horseshit, and politically motivated too.
Do you say doctors are politically motivated when they say making cigarettes less accessible means less smoking illnesses?
No, of course not. But then there aren't millions of illegal cigarettes already out there on the street, nor are they reusable, etc. So it's not even remotely a similar comparison. If you turned off the sale of cigarettes tomorrow, the amount of cigarettes in circulation would drop to a near zero amount in short order. Not so with firearms.
Trying to reason with a progressive is like trying to explain to a small child that no, they can't have a pony, ie it's a waste of time. Their brains are incapable of dealing with rational argument when they want something so badly. This is why they are able to hold totally contradictory opinions on various issues and not see any problem. Deaths from guns are terrible and must be addressed but only by burdening responsible law-abiding gun owners. Actually addressing the problem, ie inner city gangs and illegal alien drug cartels, is racist and unthinkable. Any person of normal intelligence can see the reason for this disconnect is totally political. Lawful gun owners tend to be republican and gangs and illegals are core elements of the dem base, so that dictates the policy. It is amazing how easily the prog base is manipulated into positions that are totally against their professed interests, ie concern for low income workers versus open borders which clearly hurts those same low income workers.