With Democrats in Congress and in the California state legislature pushing as much gun control as humanly possible, California gun sales are skyrocketing. Meanwhile, gun crime in the state is dropping dramatically.
In 2002, 350,000 guns were sold in the state of California. By 2011, that number was 600,000. Last year, it jumped to 817,000, a single year increase of 36 percent.
Did crime go up? Precisely the opposite. Since 2002, hospital visits due to injuries from gun wounds plummeted 28 percent. Gun deaths decreased 15 percent.
But that doesn’t stop California’s sanctimonious liberals from pushing more gun control. “When I see that the sales go up, I don’t like that,” complained LAPD Chief Charlie Beck. “My officers have to face these guns on the street.”
There is no evidence of that. The LAPD is facing less guns even as more guns are stolen. And the guns the LAPD does face are disproportionately acquired illegally. Even Beck admits that “guns that are excess and become unwanted in a home” are sold illegally, and that “those are the kind of guns that my officers run into on the street.” So gun laws didn’t stop those sales. What will more gun laws do?
Nothing. More gun sales have correlated with less crime for a decade now in California. And the left’s single-minded pursuit of gun control shows that they don’t care about declining crime nearly as much as they care about disarming the public.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News, and author of the upcoming book “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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