Gun control opponents can be counted on to cite violence such as the horrific mass shooting in downtown Sacramento last weekend as evidence that gun laws don’t work. California has more gun laws than any other state, the argument goes, so every shooting within its borders undermines the entire enterprise of firearm regulation.
This is nonsense. The correlation between the availability of guns and the incidence of gun violence is as strong as common sense would predict. Laws that make guns less accessible therefore tend to diminish the likelihood that people will be hurt and killed by them. Gun violence, in short, is a policy problem, and local, state and national policymakers can still do more to prevent shootings.
A study of gun violence led by Stanford researchers, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, underscored the strong association between the presence of firearms and their misuse, finding that Californians living with handgun owners were nearly three times as likely to be killed with a gun. The researchers also noted that one in three American homes contains a firearm, “a far higher level of private ownership than in any other country,” figures augmented by a surge in gun purchases during the pandemic.
