I was not surprised to read the commentary from the Heritage Foundation highlighting mass shootings in California and attacking California’s restrictive gun laws (“California’s gun laws are not the answer,” Feb. 21). The writer conveniently ignored the bigger picture about gun-related deaths in the U.S. by focusing only on mass shootings. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were over 45,000 gun deaths in the U.S. in 2020, including 54% by suicide, 43% by homicide and the rest related to law enforcement and accidental shootings. For obvious reasons, mass shootings get the most media attention, but they account for only about 1% of gun deaths.
In 2020, the age-adjusted firearm death rate in the U.S. was 13.6 per 100,000 people. Of interest, California had the seventh lowest rate at 8.5 per 100,000 compared to a rate of 14.2 in Texas and 28.6 in Mississippi. Not surprisingly, there was a close correlation among death rates, gun ownership rates and firearm laws. States such as Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Wyoming and Alabama with high rates of gun ownership and less restrictive gun laws had among the highest death rates while states such as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Hawaii with more restrictive gun laws had the lowest rates. Maryland, with a rate of 13.5 per 100,000, falls in the middle.
Even in California, mass shooting statistics, while grim, are not as bad as those portrayed by the writer from the Heritage...
The notorious ShinyHunters gang on Tuesday claims to have breached the FBI, compromising multiple systems and agent data – all in apparent retaliation against the law enforcement agency for publis...