The study looks at Florida's red flag law, passed in the wake of Parkland when the normally pro-gun state was so completely rattled that they'd do anything.

And there are issues with the findings.

A recent study from researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health has found that Florida's red flag gun law, which was enacted in response to the 2018 Parkland mass shooting, was associated with an 11% reduction in firearm homicide rates from 2019 to 2021. Firearm homicides are a leading cause of death among those under 44 in the U.S., and Florida's red flag law allows law enforcement officers to temporarily remove firearms from individuals deemed a danger to themselves or others.

This is among the first research to link firearm legislation in the U.S. with a significant decrease in gun-related homicides. The findings are published in JAMA.

The researchers used mortality data from CDC WONDER on firearm and non-firearm homicide and suicide mortality and employed augmented synthetic control methods. These methods constructed a proxy state for Florida from 19 politically conservative states without similar gun laws during the study period, allowing for a counterfactual comparison in mortality rates in the post-law enactment period from 2019 to 2021. Models also controlled for state-level sociodemographic and economic covariates.

The researchers found that Florida's firearm homicide rate increased from 4.51 deaths per 100,000 population in 2017 to 5.28 in 2021, compared to 4.50 to 6.85 for its proxy state. Models estimated that by 2021, Florida's firearm homicide rates were significantly lower than expected, which translated to a reduction of 0.73 fewer deaths per 100,000 individuals per year on average in the post-law enactment period. Findings were not significant, however, for other mortality outcomes across the post-law enactment period.

Well, this is great news for anti-gunners, right?

Except for the fact that even these researchers acknowledge that the state's homicide rate went up. They simply argue that it didn't go up as much as it should have, which is a bit of an issue for me because look at how they figured that.

They created a synthetic Florida based on other states that aren't Florida.

Where have we seen that before? Oh yeah.

The study cited there used a synthetic Connecticut for comparison sake, but then used Rhode Island as the lion's share of that synthetic Connecticut, just as the state has a spike in homicides.

Here, we don't know what states were actually used, which is a bit of an issue. Using a state that saw a dramatic increase in the homicide rate for some reason, one greater than the nation saw as a whole--which is what happened with the Connecticut study--would skew the results. 

To the researchers' credit, they do acknowledge that the response to COVID-19 might well have created some differences that would affect the study, which is also true.

However, there are also a lot of other factors that might have contributed as well. It's impossible to control for all of those. If they tried, they'd probably do so in a way that would amplify the supposed need for gun control.

And really, that's what gets me.

We can't determine if eggs are good for us or not because studies find different things at different times, but gun studies universally seem to come up with an anti-gun rights finding. How eggs impact human health is an objective metric, and they can't get a definitive answer, apparently, yet gun research involves all kinds of hocus pocus subjectivity and somehow always gets a particular answer, yet we're not supposed to question anything.

Well, I do. I'll keep questioning it, too, because this research is tainted and it needs to be called out as tainted.