California’s gun laws haven’t stopped mass shootings
So far, this year, there have been six mass shootings in the state. Nationwide, there have been 48.
California has a problem and no solution in sight — at least not that we can clearly see.
Three women were found dead in a car outside of a rental home in Beverly Hills, on Saturday — marking the sixth mass shooting in 13 days to rock the state.
The city of Monterey Park was the scene of another mass shooting, on Jan. 21, that killed 12 people at a dance studio.
A teenage mother and her baby, along with six others, were found shot to death at a home in Goshen, on Jan. 16.
Chunli Zhao admitted to shooting and killing seven co-workers, on Jan. 23 in Half Moon Bay.
Then, on Jan. 27, four people were shot, one fatally, in San Diego, in two shooting incidents that occurred several miles apart, but were committed by the same suspect, according to the San Diego Police Department.
While there is clearly an issue in the state of California, several mass shootings have occurred across the country in the first few weeks of 2023.
Nationwide, there have been 48 mass shootings, so far, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a website that tracks shootings nationwide.
So why are such tragic events occurring in a state that has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country?
According to Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, the “status quo” even with increasingly severe gun regulations, is not working. That’s what he told reporters, on Sunday evening, in response to the shooting in Monterey Park.
“California is known for having strict gun laws, but it is not surprising that guns are prevalent in the state,” Matthew Lang, who has studied firearms sales and is a professor of economics at the University of Riverside, told ABC News.
The state, in 1989, passed the Roberti-Roose Assault Weapons Control Act following the killings of five school children at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton that year. It was the first ban on assault weapons in the nation.
Californians passed Proposition 63, in 2016, which requires background checks when purchasing ammunition and prohibits possession of large-capacity magazines. Also that year, a red flag law went into effect that prevents certain people from obtaining firearms.
The state employs a licensing system for gun and ammunition purchases and bans the sale of most handguns that don’t have a magazine safety or loaded-chamber indicator, according to a news report.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, in 2022, approved a barrage of new legislation, including a law that would raise the minimum age for sales and transfer of firearms and invest state funds to support evidence-based community violence intervention strategies, the news report said. This was done in response to the Robb Elementary School shootings in Uvalde, Texas.
Even though the mass shootings continue, along with gun violence in California, we are assured by the “experts” that gun laws here are working.
“While 3,449 people died from gun violence in California, in 2020, the state still has one of the lowest gun death rates in the country at 8.5 deaths per 100,000 people, about 37% lower than the national average,” according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rate of 3.9 per 100,000 gun homicides in California is much lower than the 6.1 per 100,000 rate in Texas, according to Everystat. org
So what’s the issue? Why is there still gun violence in the state? Dr. Amy Barnhorst, associate director for the California Firearm Violence Research Center at the University of California Davis, told ABC News that background checks don’t catch everyone, especially those without a criminal history, those who have been psychiatrically hospitalized or those who don’t meet any of the other criteria for prohibition of owning a gun.
If the safety net for keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys isn’t working 100%, what does that mean for future gun sales in the state of California? We don’t have the answer to that question, but we suspect the folks at the state capitol do.