Stats don’t back CA gun grab

29 Dec, 2012 by CalWatchdog Staff

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Dec. 29 By Steven Greenhut — California’s Democratic legislators are actively introducing measures designed to limit our ability to defend ourselves with firearms, yet the Sacramento Bee reported today that gun deaths have been going down even as gun ownership here has increased.

Per the Bee:

Gun deaths and injuries have dropped sharply in California, even as the number of guns sold in the state has risen, according to new state data. Dealers sold 600,000 guns in California last year, up from 350,000 in 2002, according to records of sale tallied by the California Attorney General’s office. During that same period, the number of California hospitalizations due to gun injuries declined from about 4,000 annually to 2,800, a roughly 25 percent drop, according to hospital records collected by the California Department of Public Health.

That’s a stunning increase in gun sales and precipitous drop in gun injuries. Of course, those numbers don’t prove that more guns equal fewer gun deaths, although author John Lott’s book “More Guns, Less Crime” makes that case persuasively. Still, it certainly reinforces the point that keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens is unlikely to reduce crime. Kudos to the Bee, which has a liberal editorial page, for reporting this truth.