By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The Phoenix New Times this week published a report lamenting the fact that Arizona has “once again” received an “F” grade for so-called “gun safety laws” by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
“More than 1,400 people in Arizona died from being shot in 2023, the Centers for Disease Control reported in its most recent dataset,” the New Times complained. The newspaper quotes Emma Brown, executive director at the Giffords Law Center, declaring, “Arizona has some of the weakest gun laws in the country. It’s time for leaders in Arizona to step up and act to address this crisis. Americans across the board including Republicans, independents and gun owners support solutions like universal background checks and extreme risk laws that reduce crime and save lives.”
But wait a minute. According to the CDC Firearm Mortality map, neighboring California, which got an “A” grade from Giffords on its annual Gun Law Scorecard, 2023 saw 3,209 firearms-related deaths. This number is confirmed by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which broke down the fatalities. The California number included 1,427 homicides and 1,647 suicides. Another 135 gun-related fatalities were attributed to “other.”
Meanwhile, the nation’s wealthiest gun prohibition lobbying group, Everytown for Gun Safety, also ranks California at the top of its scale for restrictive gun laws, yet in 2023, Statista—which posts the number of homicides by state in actual body counts—put California second to Texas (1,334 to 1,459, respectively). Texas invariably gets poor grades from both anti-gun-rights groups.
Statistics are interesting, and the discussion invariably gets skewered when talking rates, rather than actual body counts.
For example, this week the Violence Policy Center released a report comparing gun-related deaths to motor vehicle fatalities in 2023, noting that “gun deaths outpace motor vehicle deaths in 34 states.”
California, with its 3,209 firearms-related fatalities posted 4,777 motor vehicle deaths, based on CDC data.
Florida, which always gets low grades from the gun control crowd, reported 3,253 gun-related deaths in 2023, but racked up 3,641 motor vehicle fatalities that year, according to the VPC report.
But Maryland, with it’s A-grade strict laws, reported 737 gun deaths that year and 651 motor vehicle deaths in 2023, and Illinois—another state with restrictive gun control laws—posted 1,691 firearms-related deaths and 1,356 motor vehicle deaths.
And the District of Columbia logged 225 gun fatalities and only 56 traffic deaths.
Translation: Strict gun control laws are no guarantee that deaths will go down below car crash fatalities, and vice versa.
