From the Dishonest Journalism Department:
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made a similar claim at his news conference on Wednesday: “People who think that, ‘well, maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it’s gonna solve it’ — Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.” The facts powerfully suggest that’s not true.
Go back roughly 15 years: In 2005, California had almost the same rate of deaths from guns as Florida or Texas. California had 9.5 firearms deaths per 100,000 people that year, Florida had 10 and Texas 11, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Since then, California repeatedly has tightened its gun laws, while Florida and Texas have moved in the opposite direction. - Essential Politics: Gun deaths dropped in California as they rose in Texas: Gun control seems to work. By David Lauter/Los Angeles Times. May 27, 2022
What’s so dishonest about this article? Let me count the ways:
The piece came out soon after the mass shootings in New York and Texas. The Texas governor was clearly referring to the country’s high homicide rate when he said tougher gun laws would not “solve it”. However, the LA Times piece refers to “gun deaths”, which includes suicides. The author neglects to mention this fact.
The more apt comparison would be of state homicide rates. Per the state-level data in the FBI’s 2019 Annual Crime Report (Table 20), an average of 68% of homicides were committed with firearms that year, across 49 states and the District of Columbia. (Unfortunately, the one state that did not submit data to the FBI was Florida.)
The article compares gun deaths for only two data points (2005 and 2020) for just three states. Such a limited dataset cannot “powerfully suggest” anything.
Homicide rates skyrocketed across most states in 2020. But that was the first year of the pandemic and the people got crazy violent, so the 2020 numbers may not represent a trend but special circumstances. Better to measure the homicide trends as they develop over time.
The FBI’s Data Explorer System does provide annual state-level homicide data for the period of 2010-2020. Over that eleven-year period, the average annual homicide rate per 100,000 population was 4.7 for California, 4.9 for Texas, and 5.2 for Florida. Not much of a difference.
Furthermore, the eleven-year average is the same as the 2010 homicide rate for Texas and Florida and almost the same for California (4.8 in 2010, compared to an average rate of 4.7 over 2010-2020). In other words, the average homicide rate has barely budged in these states over the period of 2010-2020.
But if you leave out the 2020 data, homicide rates actually decreased in all three states from 2010-2019 - falling slightly more in Texas and Florida than in California. What a difference one bad year makes!
For the record, I’m generally in favor of gun control laws, such as 10-day waiting periods, limits on who may own a firearm, mandatory handgun training, and limits on magazine capacity. However, I’m doubtful stricter gun laws would have much impact on homicide rates in the US - unless the government managed to confiscate most of the handguns currently in circulation. But that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.