Brady under fire

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds no clear evidence that the Brady handgun law has reduced gun deaths. The National Rifle Association seems very pleased with this, asserting that “schemes like the Brady waiting period have nothing to do with reducing criminal behavior.”

It’s the sort of leap in logic the NRA has polished to an art form: Ignore the complexities; pay no attention to the researchers’ own caveats; issue a blanket statement that ignores previous statements about enforcing existing laws instead of passing new ones.

The study examined firearms deaths before and after the Brady background checks took effect in 1994, comparing states that already had similar laws and those that did not. The purpose of the study was to determine whether shooting deaths declined faster in the 32 states that had to make changes to comply. Although firearms deaths declined nationwide, there was no appreciable difference between the two categories of states, other than in suicides among the elderly.

Far from proving that gun control does not work, the study highlights the problems that result when a national disgrace is handled on what still is largely a state-by-state basis. Guns, of course, do not always kill in the state of purchase; the flow of guns from lax states to the more restrictive is well known, just virtually impossible to document. Utterly impossible to track is the transfer of guns on the largely unregulated secondary market – person-to-person, criminal-to-criminal. By coincidence and perhaps due to a booming economy, the murder has dropped in all states during the initial assessment period, skewing the research conditions credible scientific assessments demand.

One aspect that has been truly nd accurately measured is that in the six years of Brady, licensed, law-abiding gun dealers have denied sales to more than 500,000 people who are prohibited from owning them. The extent to which these people have bought guns outside of the law is among the many serious and complex questions the JAMA study raises.

Leave it to the NRA to provide the simple answer.