Michael Hiltzik: California's tough gun laws have made the state safer than the rest of the country
The most predictable response by the gun lobby and its political mouthpieces to calls for stricter gun laws in the wake of mass shootings is that tough laws don't work.
You've probably heard all the arguments: That we already have tough laws on the books, that the problem is they aren't enforced. Or that the legislation most often proposed wouldn't have stopped the latest perpetrator of the latest gun-related horror, such as Uvalde gunman Salvador Ramos.
None of that is true, and California, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, is the proof.
As we've reported before, statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that overall firearm deaths in California, at 8.5 per 100,000 population in 2020, easily bests the rates in states with lax controls, such as Texas (14.2 per 100,000) and Louisiana (26.3).
The disparity is especially sharp when it comes to firearm deaths of those under 18. California's rate is about half that of the national average, less than half
