Researchers behind a recent gun control study admit that the hypothesis for the study “has not been validated.”

The study, which appeared in the British Medical Journal, claims that states with less restrictive gun laws witness higher levels of mass shootings. The researchers behind the study included Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s Paul Reeping.

The study looked at FBI crime data from 1998–2014 and concluded:

Permissiveness or restrictiveness of state gun laws is associated with the rate of mass shootings in the US. States with more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership have higher rates of mass shootings, and a growing divergence is noted in recent years as rates of mass shootings in restrictive states have decreased and those in permissive states have increased.

The left immediately saw the intimation that more guns equal more crime and ran with the study. Vox, Newsweek, Yahoo News, The Hill, and others printed summaries of the study, dutifully noting that more guns equal more crime or, at the least, more mass shootings.

But outlets and individuals who did more than simply read the summary and conclusion of the study found a shocking admission by the researchers — namely, that “the state restrictiveness-permissiveness score we used has not been validated.” In other words, the very hypothesis that less restrictive gun laws lead to more mass shootings has yet to be verified.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.