By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
CNN is reporting on a new study conducted by the Everytown for Gun Safety gun control group, which claims “nearly 300,000 lives could be saved” if the entire country adopted restrictive gun control laws such as those in California.
But are there some big holes in that assertion? Could be.
First, according to the website Statista, California leads the nation in a number of homicides. In 2022, the Golden State reported 2,197 murders, outpacing even Texas, where permitless carry is now the law, and there are more than a million active concealed carry licenses. Texas ranks among the weakest states in terms of gun control laws, according to the Everytown study.
Second, legal actions have resulted in some federal district court rulings that challenged California gun laws, which have been declared unconstitutional.
The CNN story is about Everytown’s 2024 state report card.
Even more telling, the Everytown study says Washington and neighboring Oregon are “making progress.” Washington homicides have reached a new record. Statista says Washington racked up 384 murders in 2022. That number may be light, as TGM reported earlier. The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs say there were 394 murders in 2022.
Oregon in 2022 reported 188 murders, Statista says. According to Oregon Live/Portland Oregonian, that year Portland produced 101 of those homicides, a staggering new record.
“One of the signals this is bogus research is the way Everytown graded Washington State, where the Citizens Committee is headquartered,” said Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. “Washington is positioned ninth on the list, and is described as ‘making progress.’ The state has adopted increasingly restrictive gun laws in recent years, and the number of homicides has more than doubled since 2014, according to FBI data and statistics from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. Seattle just set a new homicide record in 2023. If that’s what Everytown calls ‘making progress,’ we would be better off going back to living in caves.”
The CNN story said California and New York are “considered ‘national leaders’ in the report” from Everytown. Statista data says New York racked up 762 homicides in 2022. Florida, on the other hand, with its permitless carry law and more than 2 million active concealed carry licenses—many which are held by non-residents—only reported 344 slayings that year, though Statista acknowledged the Sunshine State’s data were incomplete.
Where this can get confusing is when one report focuses on percentages of slayings per population, while some argue the more telling number is the raw body count.
Everytown, the CNN report noted, uses data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the past, the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report was a user-friendly platform where people could easily find the estimated number of homicide deaths, but since 2020, the agency has switched to National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which includes a program called the “Crime Data Explorer.” This is where the FBI data can get confusing, and when this system first went online, TGM made repeated efforts to contact the FBI via telephone and email for explanations about retrieving data and explaining it, but the agency never responded.
Everytown’s state scorecard appears more biased toward the strictness of gun control laws rather than the numbers of homicides. States with strict gun laws get higher grades while states with more reasonable gun laws, despite whether they have low numbers of homicides, get the lower grades. CNN’s report acknowledged as much when it included the reaction from a National Rifle Association spokesman.
“The highest ratings go to states with the most restrictive gun laws,” said NRA spokesman Billy McLaughlin. “This isn’t science; it’s an assault on the rights of law-abiding citizens, masquerading as research. A responsible media would challenge such propaganda, not parrot it.”
