Jim, this is great stuff. It's pretty clear that strict gun laws don't create a "safer" state.
What is blurring the picture of your data is the city-level data:
New Orleans, St Louis, Miami, and Richmond are all in the permissive states. The anti's like to point to these states as proof that we need more gun control. Looks like your data will refute that though. Keep up the good work.
It would be good to figure out how to control for the effect of the cities...
Source:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/nei...violence/4171/