California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) called out Sen. John Cornyn was after the Texas Republican showed headlines suggesting California’s strict gun laws would not work to prevent mass shootings.
“California Has Over 100 Gun Laws. Why Don’t They Stop Mass Shootings?” Cornyn tweeted, along with a New York Times article under the same title, following three mass shootings in the country that left at least 19 dead.
Newsom shared Cornyn’s tweet, noting: “Texas’ gun death rate is 67% higher than California.”
That checks out. When it comes to firearm death rates, California ranks among the lowest in the nation, with 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2020, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Texas, on the other hand, had 14.2 gun deaths per 100,000 population in the same year. That’s higher than the national rate of 13.7 per 100,000.
Regardless, this month’s shooting has drawn new attention to California’s gun laws — the toughest in the country.
As the Times noted in its article, the state has more than 100 gun laws, including bans on semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity magazines and bans on gun ownership for domestic violence offenders and people deemed a danger to themselves or others. .
It still wasn’t enough to prevent this month’s tragedy. Gun safety advocates have mobilized to fill the loopholes that have allowed this to happen, while gun rights advocates have held the gun because evidence of gun laws doesn’t work. (As the Times also notes, they do: According to the Public Policy Institute of California, Californians are about 25% more likely to die in a mass shooting.)
Cornyn, who is one of the top recipients in Congress of campaign donations from gun rights lobbyists, is thought to have added to the chorus when he shared the article.
Newsom didn’t just deny it anymore, with commentators pointing out, among other statistics, that five of the 10 deadliest shootings in modern US history happened in Texas, which has some of the laxest gun laws in the country.