Spate of violence hits home
Whether state’s tough gun laws are working is up for debate in aftermath of recent shootings
California is one of the country’s most restrictive states when it comes to firearms and ranked best by gun-control advocates for its extensive laws. But the Golden State also has seen three mass shootings in four days and four in the past three weeks.
Does gun control work? The recent deadly shootings are reigniting the debate, but statistics show Californians are less likely to be killed by guns than people in most other U.S. states.
Despite the recent rash of gun massacres in Fresno, San Diego, Santa Clarita and Orinda, California has one of the nation’s lowest rates of gun violence.
Though figures are not available for the current year, the most recent statistics from 2017 show California has the sixth-lowest rate of shooting deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
California’s death rate per 100,000 residents also has been falling, from eighth lowest in 2015 and 16th lowest in 2005.
California’s rate of 7.9 gun deaths per 100,000 residents in 2017 was a third of the rate in highest-ranked Alaska, with 24.5 deaths per 100,000, which was followed by 22.9 in Alabama, 22.5 in
Montana and 21.7 in Louisiana. The rates include all shooting deaths — homicide, suicide and unintentional.
The states with the lowest shooting death rates? Hawaii, with 2.5 per 100,000 residents, Massachusetts and New York, with 3.7, and Rhode Island, with 3.9.
The states with the lowest rates of gun deaths also tend to be those with the strictest gun laws. The Giffords Law Center gun-control advocacy group, which gives California an “A” for its laws, is one of only two with the top rating. Hawaii, New York and Massachusetts each got A-minus grades on the Giffords annual gun law score card, and Rhode Island a B-minus. The group gave Alaska, Alabama, Montana and Louisiana an “F.”
After last week’s high school shooting, Rep. Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, and Democratic presidential candidates visiting the state for a weekend forum argued the gun violence shows a need for stronger federal gun laws.
“It’s important to address gun control on a local and a state basis, but it just really increases the need for us to have uniform gun laws, and have legislation pass on a federal basis,” Bass said last week after a student fatally shot two classmates at a Santa Clarita high school.
But others argued the recent shootings demonstrate the futility of gun restrictions they say only burden and infringe on the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.
“With multiple mass shootings in gun-controlled California over the last few days, the truth about the effects of disarmament could not be more clear,” the Firearms Policy Coalition, a gunrights group, said Tuesday. “Gun control, no matter how small — or sweeping — will always result in more criminality… not less.”
Some also note recent mass shootings in Mexico, including this month’s massacre of three women and six children this month in an apparent attack by drug cartels, in a country with some of the world’s most stringent gun laws. A resident of the small Mexican town near the site of the massacre was quoted saying he felt the country’s gun laws leave law-abiding citizens vulnerable.
While California has low rates of gun deaths, that doesn’t mean the country’s most populous state doesn’t have a lot of gun-related fatalities. There were 3,184 people killed by guns in the Golden State in 2017, about 18 times the 180 who died from guns in Alaska, which owned the highest gun death rate that year. The only state with more firearm fatalities was Texas, the second-most populous state, with 3,513 gun deaths in 2017, and an “F” rating by Giffords for its gun laws.
Recent mass shootings, however, are adding to California’s grim tally for 2019:
• On Sunday, four people were killed and six more wounded in Fresno when armed assailants sneaked into the backyard of a home and fired into crowd that had come for a football party.
• On Saturday, five family members were killed and another hospitalized in an apparent murder-suicide shooting in San Diego.
• On Thursday, a 16-yearold Saugus High School student in Santa Clarita shot five classmates, killing two of them, before turning the gun on himself.
• On Halloween night, five people were killed and several more injured when a house party at a rented mansion in the tony bedroom community of Orinda erupted in gunfire.
It’s unclear whether the recent mass shootings involved violations or gaps in existing state and federal law.
The assailants in Sunday’s shooting in Fresno have not been identified. The man who shot his estranged wife, children and himself in San Diego was the subject of a pending court restraining order.
Authorities aren’t sure how the boy who shot classmates in Santa Clarita got hold of the .45-caliber pistol he used, which both state and federal law would prohibit him from possessing. And prosecutors declined to charge five suspects arrested in the Halloween shooting in Orinda, citing only a need for more investigation.
Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs said incidents like last week’s school shooting, “while tragic, are incredibly rare events,” and that politicians shouldn’t exploit them to deprive law-abiding citizens of their right to protect themselves.
“Attacking human rights like the right to keep and bear arms because of incredibly unlikely circumstances is like banning people from going outside so they don’t get struck by lightning,” Combs said.
Amanda Wilcox, legislative advocate for the California chapters for the Brady Campaign gun control group, said the recent rash of mass shootings were “discouraging.” But she said the focus is on lowering death rates, much like automobile regulations did to lower rates of roadway deaths, even though there still are many fatalities.
“I do think our gun laws are saving lives,” Wilcox said.