Fewer guns plus more gun control mean less gun violence. That makes sense. And it’s a fact.

California is proof.

That’s Mississippi.

Were a state with perhaps the strictest gun laws in the country. And we have one of the lowest gun death rates.

States with lax gun controls have some of the highest gun death rates. Many are southern red states. Starting with Mississippi.

We must be doing something right, says Garen Wintemute, director of the UC Firearms Violence Research Program.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our gun violence rate has dropped much more than the rest of the country. My suspicion is that our robust regulatory system has a lot to do with it.

Wintemute is a career researcher and emergency room doctor who has treated numerous gunshot wounds. He tends to be careful with his rhetoric.

But not so much the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which doesn’t mince words.

It rates California an A for gun control. Overall, California has the strictest gun safety laws in the country and has been a pioneer, it reports.

The state legislature has been busy recently to further strengthen California’s gun laws. More about that below.

Mississippi gets a V from Giffords: it has the weakest gun laws in the country and the highest number of gun deaths.

That is supported by the National Center for Health Statistics. For 2021, the year with the latest data, it reports that Mississippi had the highest gun-related death rate in the country at nearly 34 per 100,000 people.

That includes murders, suicides and accidental shootings.

Other states with weak gun control laws and high gun death rates include Louisiana, Alabama, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Oklahoma.

Mississippi also has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Just over 50% of the state’s residents own firearms.

Compare that to California

,

where the gun death rate was 9 per 100,000. There are seven states with even lower rates. They include New York and New Jersey, which Giffords rates as A- and A for gun control, respectively.

Gun ownership in California is one of the lowest, at 16% of households

have containing

fire weapons.

Unless I’m overlooking something, the fact that blue states with major urban centers, California, New York, and New Jersey have lower gun death rates than many red rural states, proves even more that gun control works. Cities tend to be ridden by criminal gangs more than rural towns.

There is also research that shows that you are less safe around a gun than away from it. Again, that makes sense despite the propaganda from the gun lobby.

Living with a gun owner is associated with a significantly increased risk of death by homicide, a Stanford University report concluded last year after a survey of 18 million California adults over a 12-year period.

Women bear the brunt of the increased risks. The deadly attacks they experienced often took the form of being shot by men they lived with, reported Yifan Zhang, a co-author of the study.

Meanwhile, some of California’s strictest gun laws, the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, a required background check of ammunition buyers, are being challenged in lawsuits brought by gun rights advocates inspired by the gun-friendly U.S. Supreme Court.

A monumental pro-gun decision last year by the Supreme Court threw out a New York law restricting who could carry concealed loaded guns. In fact, the court also invalidated California’s similar law.

Legislation to replace the old concealed gun law with one passed by the Supreme Court is the largest gun law in Sacramento this year.

You don’t need a gun to go to your daughter’s football game, the bills author, Senator Anthony Portantino (D-Burbank), keeps repeating. You don’t need a gun to get to Dodger Stadium. You don’t need a gun to go to the place where alcohol is sold.

Portantino’s bill, SB 2, would ban concealed weapons in government buildings, schools, medical facilities, churches, playgrounds, athletic fields and bars.

It would impose uniform statewide standards for issuing concealed weapons permits. It would no longer be at the discretion of the local sheriff.

Sheriffs vehemently oppose my bill because they want to be able to issue permits knowingly, the legislature says.

The Senate recently sent the measure to the General Assembly by a vote of 29 to 9. Most Democrats voted yes. Republicans opposed.

The debate was heated.

While the Democrats will do nothing about people who overdose on fentanyl, Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-San Diego) claimed, they insist on this [Senate] floor and get complacent about gun control.

The Assembly recently passed a more problematic bill, which is now going to the Senate. It would levy an 11% excise tax on arms and ammunition sales, raising $160 million annually. The money would fund gun violence prevention programs.

It’s a good cause. These programs work. But they must be paid from the general state fund. It’s a social problem. Everyone must participate. Not just hunters and target shooters. Many bad guys steal their guns anyway and never pay the taxes.

The author of the bills, Councilman Jesse Gabriel (D-Woodland Hills), says manufacturers and retailers would be taxed, not consumers. But you know how that goes. The consumer ultimately pays.

The bill, AB 28, was passed by a vote of 56 to 17.

Gov. Gavin Newsom should put money out of the general fund to pay for the valuable programs and avoid taxing law-abiding gun owners.

Master their weapons. Take off their wallets.