Study: Universal Background Checks in California Did Not Reduce Homicides

[Swordsmyth]

A UC Davis study examining the first ten years after California adopted universal background checks shows that those checks did not reduce homicides.

In other words, the very checks that the Democrat Party pushes on the national level — the checks that Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) describes as the gun control “north star” — already exist in California, and they did nothing to reduce homicides during the time frame studied.
Townhall reported that the study was conducted by UC Davis’s Violence Prevention Research Program (VPRP) and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The study “found no net difference between firearm-related homicide rates before and during the 10 years after policy implementation.”

More at: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...uce-homicides/

[timosman]

1. We need to do something!
2. Here's something.
3. Let's do it!.

[Zippyjuan]

The paper notes: https://health.ucdavis.edu/publish/news/newsroom/13362

The authors believe several factors may explain the findings of the study. Leading possibilities include inadequate criminal and mental health records, incomplete compliance and the small size of the population directly affected by the laws.

“Incomplete reporting of prohibiting data to background check systems in the 1990s, prior to implementation of the policies in California, is an important limiting factor,” Wintemute said. “In 1990, only 25 percent of criminal records were accessible in the primary federal database used for background checks, and centralized records of mental health prohibitions were almost nonexistent. As a result, a large number of people likely passed their background checks even in cases where, according to law, they should have been prohibited from purchasing a firearm. This remains a serious problem today; mass shootings have resulted from prohibited persons passing background checks and purchasing firearms.”

[Swordsmyth]

The paper notes: https://health.ucdavis.edu/publish/news/newsroom/13362

[oyarde]

It never will . Criminals do not obey laws , no matter how many or how ridiculous . Laws only punish the innocent and law abiding . The cowardly dem vision of the world is to punish everyone for what they pretend to fear and prefer you do not have . This is the only contribution they have to make to society . They are evil .

[CCTelander]

It's been conclusively proven for decades that "gun control" (victim disarmament) laws of any kind do almost nothing to reduce crime and violence. The pols and others leading the charge for ever moar victim disarmament are very well aware of this fact. They couldn't care less about reducing crime. As L. Neil Smith has often noted, these creatures want to take your guns not to reduce crime but so they can do things to you that would be more difficult or impossible if you still had your guns (and the will to use them if necessary). They just keep selling the lie of crime reduction to keep the rubes supporting them.

ETA: The sad thing is that they really needn't worry about Americans' guns at all since:

1. American gun owners are toothless. They don't really believe their own rhetoric and thetefor lack the will, the courage of their convictions to stand firm and not be disarmed and enslaved. Had they these latter they could have easily won this philosophical battle over guns (and liberty in general too) decades ago without ever having to fire a shot or spill a single drop of blood. And

2. The real battle that needs to be won can't be won with bullets anyway.

[TheCount]

It's been conclusively proven for decades that "gun control" (victim disarmament) laws of any kind do almost nothing to reduce crime and violence.

My suspicion would be that the only crimes which could be reduced by gun control are crimes of negligence... which are not and never have been the focus of gun control efforts. Negligence isn't a great motivator for taking things away from people, or else we'd all be eating with spoons in amply padded rooms.

[CCTelander]

My suspicion would be that the only crimes which could be reduced by gun control are crimes of negligence... which are not and never have been the focus of gun control efforts. Negligence isn't a great motivator for taking things away from people, or else we'd all be eating with spoons in amply padded rooms.

In the case of suicides, for example, there are many extant studies which demonstrate that any suicides that happen to be prevented by victim disarmament (gun control) laws are always almost perfectly offset by an increase in suicides by other means. So the net benefit is zero. People just find another way.

In the case of injuries or deaths caused by negligent gun use, the situation is very similar. People who treat firearms ownership negligently almost always display a similar negligence accross the board, in all areas of their life. Therefore it is highly likely that any injuries or deaths caused by negligence with firearms that might be prevented with victim disarmament laws would likewise be offset by injuries and deaths caused by negligence in other areas, and there is some evidence to support that premise.