The problem, especially in big cities is that weapons offenses are virtually ignored by local law enforcement until someone gets shot at and even then, many aggravated offenses are bargained away or just pleaded down to simple offenses if nobody is hurt.

So, before they even get to court the weapons offenses that would have identified them an armed offender and tagged them as prohibited persons in any background check, just disappear.

In Missouri in particular what does it matter if there is or isn't an additional layer of local checks and permits; armed criminals in Missouri will never be weeded out because armed criminals seemingly rarely get enhanced convictions that would allow them to be placed on the prohibited list (until they actually kill someone).

As St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom complains:



"One thing we have to be aware of to give context to this whole problem is that we are looking at an urban problem. It’s much less a suburban or rural problem. It really affects young minorities— Hispanic and black males. I think that the suspects devalue life, the victims devalue life, and the system also devalues life. When you look at the shooting victims and suspects in these neighborhoods, you see 20 or 30 felony arrests, with eight convictions.

Often the convictions don’t result in any jail time at all; they’re getting probation on top of probation. This has caused a lot of us in cities to move toward federal prosecution, because we know on the state level it’s a hit-and-miss prospect: they’re arrested, they’re convicted, and they come out multiple times.

In Missouri, there’s a type of probation people can receive, and it has made it very difficult for us to establish a person as a convicted felon. I’ve heard other chiefs talking about the fact that a weapons charge in their state is only a misdemeanor offense. But in St. Louis, a weapons violation can turn out to be no offense at all. An individual will get arrested for a weapons charge, which is a felony, and often they plead to that case and get an SIS—a suspended imposition of sentence. It means that if you serve out your probation, which everybody does, that conviction is erased.

So if you’re arrested again with another weapon, you don’t have a conviction on your record, so you’re not a felon in possession of a weapon. If you continue to get multiple SISs, you never become a convicted felon. These offenders will often show up for other crimes, and if they never have a conviction, then you’re never able to put stiffer charges on them."

Guns and Crime: Breaking New Ground By Focusing on the Local Impact, pg 11, Police Executive Research Forum, 2010 - LINK [/URL](2.34MB pdf)

Did you read chief Isom's comments that the repeat armed offenders he is seeing, are not prohibited persons?

"So if you’re arrested again with another weapon, you don’t have a conviction on your record, so you’re not a felon in possession of a weapon. If you continue to get multiple SISs, you never become a convicted felon. These offenders will often show up for other crimes, and if they never have a conviction, then you’re never able to put stiffer charges on them."

So, looks like the MO legislature needs to take a closer look at SIS.

needs to limit sis sentences to one or two. Really
sounds like the numbers may be skewed by other factors than the one stated in the op.

More shootings, more injuries and deaths.

let's see the actual study, and let's see the critiques it gets in peer review, assuming they release the data. The full name of the center is: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
First for a history lesson: The law passed in 1921, Michigan passed theirs in 1925, and North Carolina passed theirs in 1919. The Klan lobbied for all three of them. From then until about the 1970s, the background check amounted to white skin and affluent, pass, black skin or poor white, fail. Remember, these law were passed when the Klan was at their peak in political power in the US. In short, it was a Jim Crow law.

Did Webster look at other factors that may have had nothing to do with the law, or are they simply using a coincidence and adjusting the numbers to fit a predetermined conclusion? The problem I have is that based on the Rossi Wright studies in the 1980s, criminals don't go to gun shows or FFLs. They go to drug dealers and fences and buy a stolen gun for about one third what they pay at a legal establishment.

I addressed some of it's problems on another forum:

So many issues with that study...


*The article (I'd have to look at the actual study to know if these errors occurred in the research methodology or if it's just sloppy reporting) mentions "abandonment of the background check." The problem with attributing anything to that "abandonment" is that the state-level background check requirement was redundant. Federal law mandates background checks for all retail gun purchases. Background checks were still being conducted.
*The citation fails to note if there was a reduction in gun-related homicide subsequent to the original enactment of the law. Absent such a reduction, then attributing a later increase in homicide to the law's repeal is dubious at best.
*The study appears to employ total gun-related homicide figures while the repealed law applied only to handgun purchases. While the majority of homicides are indeed committed with handguns, this nevertheless inflates the increase (unless none of those additional homicides were committed with a rifle or shotgun, which is statistically unlikely).
*Similar to the above point, the study fails to employ only those homicides committed with handguns purchased after the repeal as it's delta (that is, the amount of change). It instead uses the total increase in gun-related homicides. It's invalid to attribute these other homicides to the change in the law.
*Prof. Hopkins cites this scenario as evidence supporting his broad statement that "weaknesses in firearm laws lead to deaths from gun violence," yet the law in question was a very specific, narrow one (mandating vetting by local law enforcement); expanding his already-dubious conclusion to all gun laws is methodologically unsupportable to a downright embarrassing degree.
*The observation that recently-purchased handguns showing up at crime scenes fails to note whether the suspects in those crimes were the purchasers or if they were made by straw purchasers; this matters because the latter category would be far less likely to be prevented by the law.
*The study doesn't state what portion of the additional homicides were declared justifiable (Missouri dumped their "duty to retreat" provision in the same year).

This study doesn't remotely constitute evidence that gun laws in general are too lax. It's barely even evidence that the repeal of that local vetting law had a detrimental effect (although I'm reserving judgement on that until I can review the actual research...most reporters aren't competent to do so, and their assertions regarding what the data actually indicates are generally worthless).

or drugs...