In 2014, Los Angeles had more gun control–notably a ban on “high capacity” magazines, a trigger lock requirement, and numerous other new gun controls passed the previous year. Yet they also saw violent crime rise “14.3 percent,” driven by “aggravated assaults”–assaults in which a weapon was used during the attack.
Breitbart News previously reported that 2014 saw numerous new gun laws, such as the law making it illegal to possess a “high capacity” magazine within city limits. But it was also the year in which a trigger lock/locked storage requirement for guns was passed and one in which the LA County Sheriff’s Department refused to go along with loosened concealed carry restrictions handed down by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February. This refusal effectively limited the number of law-abiding LA residents receiving concealed carry licenses because it forced them to continue proving they had a “good cause” to do so.
In addition to these and other laws, new California state laws that impacted LA in 2014 included a requirement for “safety certificates for owners of long guns” and an expansion of background checks.
Yet according to the Los Angeles Times, violent crime was up “14.3 percent” in 2014–with aggravated assaults up “28.3 percent” and the number of rapes up “21 percent.”
A similar rise in violent crime was also seen in 2013 compared to 2012.
The gap between the violence numbers projected for 2014 and the actual numbers is partially “the result of classification changes [that] came after a Times investigation [in the summer of 2014] that found the LAPD significantly understated the city’s true level of crime when it misclassified nearly 1,200 serious violent crimes as low-level offenses during a recent one-year period.”
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.