2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 111,965
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Yep...the extreme gun control laws of California do not reduce mass public shootings.....
California’s 39.2 million residents comprise 11.8% of the U.S. population. Yet, according to data from the Mother Jones Mass Shooting Database, the state accounts for 20% (17 of 85) of the nation’s mass shootings since 2012, and 16.1% of its mass shooting fatalities.
No other state comes close to bearing as much responsibility for mass shootings as California. In fact, the nation’s second most populous state—Texas—accounts for only 8.2% (7 of 85) mass shootings since 2012, and 14.3% of mass shooting fatalities, despite having a polar opposite approach to gun policy.
>>> Five Years After Parkland, Florida’s Measured Response Is an Outlier
While California’s government has spent the last 12 years imposing increasingly more restrictive gun-control measures on its residents, its mass shooting problem isn’t getting better. If anything, it’s getting slightly worse.
Between 2012 and 2017, 20% (8 of 40) of all mass public shooting incidents and 13.4% (48 of 358) of all mass public shooting fatalities occurred in California. From 2018 through mid-February 2023, the state was still responsible for 20% of all mass public shooting incidents, but its share of mass public shooting fatalities soared to a whopping 20.8% (58 of 279).
The Mother Jones database uses the more traditional definition of mass shooting, in which three or more people other than the shooter are killed in a public setting during an act of indiscriminate violence. There are, of course, other ways of defining a “mass shooting.” In recent years, the definition provided by the Gun Violence Archive—which lumps together any and all shootings in which at least four people are shot, regardless of the location or context—has been become the darling of gun-control advocates, who love to invoke its higher numbers as a scare tactic.
www.heritage.org
California’s 39.2 million residents comprise 11.8% of the U.S. population. Yet, according to data from the Mother Jones Mass Shooting Database, the state accounts for 20% (17 of 85) of the nation’s mass shootings since 2012, and 16.1% of its mass shooting fatalities.
No other state comes close to bearing as much responsibility for mass shootings as California. In fact, the nation’s second most populous state—Texas—accounts for only 8.2% (7 of 85) mass shootings since 2012, and 14.3% of mass shooting fatalities, despite having a polar opposite approach to gun policy.
>>> Five Years After Parkland, Florida’s Measured Response Is an Outlier
While California’s government has spent the last 12 years imposing increasingly more restrictive gun-control measures on its residents, its mass shooting problem isn’t getting better. If anything, it’s getting slightly worse.
Between 2012 and 2017, 20% (8 of 40) of all mass public shooting incidents and 13.4% (48 of 358) of all mass public shooting fatalities occurred in California. From 2018 through mid-February 2023, the state was still responsible for 20% of all mass public shooting incidents, but its share of mass public shooting fatalities soared to a whopping 20.8% (58 of 279).
The Mother Jones database uses the more traditional definition of mass shooting, in which three or more people other than the shooter are killed in a public setting during an act of indiscriminate violence. There are, of course, other ways of defining a “mass shooting.” In recent years, the definition provided by the Gun Violence Archive—which lumps together any and all shootings in which at least four people are shot, regardless of the location or context—has been become the darling of gun-control advocates, who love to invoke its higher numbers as a scare tactic.
California Gun Control Isn’t the Cure for What Ails Us. It Isn’t Even the Cure for California
After every high-profile mass shooting, gun control advocates reflexively demand that we “just do something” about the problem. Invariably, that “something” means a very specific set of things, which can be summarized as a singular effort to impose California’s restrictive gun laws at the...
www.heritage.org
