By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
A report in USA Today about the number of privately-owned guns in the U.S. reveals in the fifth paragraph that last year saw approximately 16.7 million new gun sales last year, which was down 4 percent from sales in 2022.
This comes on the heels of a declaration earlier in the week by Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy that “gun violence” is a “public health crisis.”
The USA Today story seems to lament, “About a third of American’s say they personally own a gun, Pew Research data shows. That statistic reflects the deep-rooted culture of gun ownership in the U.S. Another report found that in the first four months of 2024, nearly 5.5. million firearms were purchased in the country.”
According to the report, the top ten states for gun sales last year were:
- Texas: 1,347,589
- Florida: 1,316,471
- California: 1,043,421
- Pennsylvania: 841,523
- Tennessee: 633,015
- Ohio: 583,314
- Virginia: 581,698
- Michigan: 555,650
- Missouri: 520,488
- Illinois: 504,452
But there is an interesting fact not mentioned in the story, which Ammoland News covered. Gun ownership and even the percentage of gun owners in each state’s population, do not translate to higher homicide body counts.
And a report from World Population Review shows the two highest states for the percentage of gun owners in then population have extremely low raw homicide numbers. In Montana, 66.3 percent of the population are gun owners and neighboring Wyoming reports 66.2 percent have guns. In 2022, Montana had 1.123 million people. The same year, Wyoming had 581,381 residents.
In 2022, California had a population of 39.03 million, and Texas had a population of 30.03 million. That year, the Golden State led the country in homicides at 2,206 with Texas in second place at 2,020 slayings.
According to Statista.com, 28.3 percent of Californians own guns, while 45.7 percent of Texans own guns.
Newsweek notes in a recent report that the Giffords gun ban lobbying group gives California high marks for its strict gun laws, which do not appear to have translated to fewer homicides. Texas is not in the Bottom Ten rankings, but it’s down there at No. 31 out of 50.
How does all of this translate to public safety? It isn’t clear that it does. While the data might suggest there is a lower murder rate in states with stricter gun laws, the actual raw body counts might also suggest that states with fewer guns and stricter laws still pile up the corpses.
For example, Florida, with a 2022 population of 22.24 million, only logged 344 murders that year, according to Statista. The state boasts an estimated 35.3 percent of the population are gun owners, and they do not appear to be as prolific as Californians when it comes to murder.
In 2022, California’s murder rate was 5.9 per 100,000, according to USA Facts. The murder rate in Texas was 7.6 per 100,000. The Montana rate was 5.4 per 100,000.
While this data may not translate to improved public safety, it does something else which is significant. It strongly suggests that gun control is, and always has been, a charade, a flimsy sham designed to camouflage a quest for civilian disarmament.
