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The NRA can pump out whatever "good guys with guns" propaganda it wants, but the fact of the matter is that Americas are safer with fewer, not more guns, on the streets.
The latest proof of this comes out of Missouri, which in 2007 repealed some of its most important gun control laws, including universal background checks.
According to a new study from Johns Hopkins University, this caused a 16 percent jump in the Show Me State's gun homicide rate.
Missouri was always a violent place - its gun homicide rate was actually 13.8 percent higher than the national average before the 2007 repeal - but doing away with common sense things like background checks made things much, much worse.
Between 2008 and 2014, the first eight years after repeal of their control laws, Missouri's gun homicide rate was 47 percent - yes, 47 percent - higher than the national average.
It's a pretty straightforward equation: More freely available guns equals more gun deaths - and fewer freely available guns equals fewer guns deaths.
Period.
Which raises the question: If gun violence caused by easy access to guns is such an obvious public health problem with such an obvious solution, why doesn't our government treat it like one?
The answer to that question has a one-word answer - Republicans.
Believe it or not, it's actually illegal for the Centers of Disease Control to conduct any research whatsoever into the impact of gun control on public health.
That's right - illegal!
This is all thanks to former Arizona Republican Congressman Jay Dickey, who in 1996 pushed for and helped pass an NRA-backed law that bans government research into the relationship between gun ownership and public health.
This law is now called the Dickey Amendment after its creator, and, outside of NRA money, it's one of the biggest roadblocks in the way of our having a sensible gun control policy in this country.
Even Jay Dickey thinks so, which is why he now opposes the law he once helped create.
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