Political Quotes

“I include in the Record an article dated May 31, 2022, from The New York Times titled ``California has America's Toughest Gun Laws, and They Work.'' [From the New York Times, May 31, 2022] California Has America's Toughest Gun Laws, and They Work (By Shawn Hubler) The grotesque toll of gun violence is again being debated in Congress. As Luis Ferre-Sadurni and I reported over the long weekend, states are not holding their breath. Particularly this state: In ways that have tended to be underreported, California has significantly lowered gun deaths, Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, an emergency room doctor and longtime firearm violence researcher, told me this week. ``For the last 20, maybe even 25 years--except for the two years of the pandemic, which have increased homicides and suicides across the country--our rates of firearm violence have trended downward,'' said Dr. Wintemute, who directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento. ``And this has been at a time when most of the rates in the rest of the country have gone up.'' California's rate of firearm mortality is among the nation's lowest, with 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2020, compared with 13.7 per 100,000 nationally and 14.2 per 100,000 in Texas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported.…”