Background checks for handguns hit a new high for California in March, just months after yearly handgun sales in 2014 broke a 21-year record in California, as well.
According to The Washington Times, there were “200,000” background checks for handgun sales in California in March. This “shattered” the previous record.
Moreover, this points to a continued boom in handgun sales on the heels of 2014, when 510,000 handguns were sold in the state of California alone. The Sacramento Bee reported that the previous record for handgun sales had been 433,000, sold in 1993.
It is important to note a correlation here, in which crime and firearm accidents both diminished at the same time that handgun sales soared.
In fact, Breitbart News previously reported that accidental gun deaths in California fell as handgun sales were rising. This news dovetails with a nationwide boom in gun sales, which correlated with a nationwide drop in “violent crimes and property crimes.”
On December 4, 2013, Breitbart News reported on a Congressional Research Service (CRS) study that showed that as privately-owned guns in America went from 192 million in 1994 to 310 million in 2009, the “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” rate fell from 6.6 per 100,000 Americans in 1993 to 3.6 per 100,000 by 2000. The number finally fell to 3.2 per 100,000 in 2011.
Handguns accounted for the majority of this growth in ownership. Yet the CRS study is clear that rapid expansion of privately-owned handguns correlated with lower crime, not higher.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twiter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.