Gun deaths up in state, but Southern California figures vary widely in past 2 decades

Orange County Register - 11/24/2019

Nov. 24--Total deaths from firearms has climbed 5.6% in the Golden State since 1999, but that increase has been far slower than population growth and far from uniform across Southern California.

Carnage grew more rapidly in the inland counties -- by 18.7% in Riverside and 11.1% in San Bernardino -- while it plunged nearly 30% in Los Angeles and dipped 4% in Orange.

Statewide, 58,111 people died from firearms from 1999 to 2017, according to the most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That averages out to one death every three hours -- more than eight per day, and 3,000 per year.

"We all should be angry. This shouldn't be happening," said Samantha Dorf, founder of the San Fernando Valley volunteer group of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and a California chapter leader.

But raw numbers don't give the full picture, which is considerably brighter, even given three mass shootings in just four days in California, experts said.

Rate falls

California's gun laws are among the strictest in the nation, and the number of people who die from gun violence here is below the national average.

Population grew much more rapidly than did gun deaths -- up 18.9% -- translating to a drop in the per-capita gun death rate in the state and all four counties since 1999.

The rate of all gun-related deaths per 100,000 Californians dropped from 9.1 to 8.1 over the 19 years examined, according to CDC data. That figure includes homicides, suicides and accidents.

In Los Angeles, it fell from 11.5 to 7.6; in Orange County, from 6.2 to 5.2; in Riverside, from 9.9 to 7.3; and in San Bernardino, from 11.8 to 10.2, according to the CDC data.

Gun violence peaked in 1993, dropped dramatically through 1999 and then, but for blips and bleeps, has been on a steady march downward, said Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA's School of Law who studies homicide rates.

Once, California's homicide rate eclipsed the national average. "If you go back and look at figures from 1991, you say, 'Wow, we're doing so much better,' " Volokh said.

No one is certain why, but myriad theories have been advanced: Better policing. Incarceration. Stricter gun policies. Even the removal of lead from gasoline and lower teenage pregnancy rates, resulting in the birth of fewer unwanted children.

"It is extremely difficult to provide a simple explanation for the homicide firearm trends over such a long time period given the ups and downs of the trend across the years," said a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health by email. "As is clear from these data, there are also major variation across geographic areas."

The state has launched a Violence Prevention Initiative to examine trends.

Spasms of violence

Many have voiced outrage over spasms of violence in California, including three mass shootings in November alone.

* At Saugus High School in Santa Clarita on Nov. 14, Nathaniel Berhow pulled a pistol from his backpack and opened fire on schoolmates, killing two, wounding three, and then fatally turning the gun on himself.

* On Nov. 16, a San Diego man killed his estranged wife, three of their children and then himself. A fourth son was on life support.

* On Nov. 17, four people were killed in Fresno after a man entered a backyard party and fired into the crowd. Six were injured.

So far in 2019, there have been 34,844 deaths from gun violence in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks them. The vast majority are suicides, not homicides, but both were on the rise from 2014 to 2017 and appear to have dipped in 2018.

But the violence continues to hit some with a disproportionate wallop.

Hitting hard

Men are far more likely to die from gun violence than women, and black men are far more likely to die from gun violence than their white or Hispanic peers, according to data from the CDC, analyzed by Everytown for Gun Safety, a nationwide nonprofit that fights for stronger gun laws.

Among black males in California, the death rate is nearly five times greater than for the state as a whole, at 37.1 per 100,000 people. For white males, the rate is 14.4; for Hispanic males, 10.1; and Asian/Pacific Islander men, 4.3, according to Everytown's analysis.

In counties like Riverside and San Bernardino, where the number of gun deaths has risen even as per-capita death rates have fallen, statistics can be cold comfort.

"Even when an increase in homicides is outpaced by a city's population growth, it can nonetheless feel as if crime is getting substantially worse," said Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

"Homicides are the most vividly reported and deeply feared of all crimes."

Coastal Los Angeles and Orange counties are generally more densely populated and heavily policed, and likely have more officers assigned to weapons enforcement than the inland counties, Levin said.

In Los Angeles, officials weren't sure what's behind the trend.

"This is a complicated issue and we do not know all the factors responsible for reducing firearm deaths," said the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health by email.

"More research needs to be done to determine any differences between homicides and suicides, gun violence overall and any other nuances. Through the newly established Office of Violence Prevention we hope to advance this research and better understand the factors that lead to a reduction in firearm deaths."

If violence appears to be migrating from one county to another, said UCLA's Volokh, it could be a function of policing, demographics or even the movement of drug distribution markets.

"It could be as simple as a turf war between gangs, and one gang won," he said. "That's why it's so hard to say much about the causes -- there is so much data noise from year to year."

More guns?

In 1999, gun dealers sent 513,418 "record of sale transactions" to the Attorney General's Office. That skyrocketed 72% by 2017, when 882,585 guns changed hands.

The Attorney General's Office cautioned that these numbers are the total firearms transactions processed by its office each year, and a single firearm may have been transferred multiple times in that year, and a single transaction could include the sale of multiple firearms.

They also don't capture the number of guns people already own, and might not indicate more people have them, but rather that a gun owner is buying a fourth or fifth or sixth weapon, said UCLA's Volokh.

The data do, however, suggest a growing preference for handguns. In 1999, less than half the records were for handguns, and the rest for long guns, according to the attorney general. In 2017, handguns accounted for more than 59% of sales.

The availability of gun parts on the internet, and the rise of 3-D printing, pose a grave new threat, activists say.

The Saugus High shooter apparently used a self-manufactured "ghost gun" in the attack -- a firearm that can be easily assembled from parts for sale on the internet without a background check.

"They undermine all of our gun safety laws," said Nick Suplina, managing director for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, in a statement. "The bottom line is that ghost guns are incredibly dangerous and there is no reason why the parts are available at the click of a button."

Mass shootings fraction of total

There have been 372 mass shootings in America just this year -- more than one per day. There were 269 in all of 2014.

Nationwide, there have been 492 school shootings from 2013 to today, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. California has endured 29 of them.

"Mass shootings are a tiny, tiny fraction of homicides, literally less than 1% under any definition," said UCLA's Volokh. "They get a lot of attention, but if you're trying to save lives, that's not the place to look."

Everytown for Gun Safety has launched a new online platform to make CDC data easily accessible to the public. Anyone can get detailed breakdowns on gun deaths -- at the national, state and county levels -- with just a few clicks online.

The group advocates for reforms like better background checks, "red flag" laws allowing family members and police to ask a judge to temporarily block firearms possession if a person poses a threat to themselves or others, limiting access to weapons and accessories that can inflict mass casualties, funding research into gun violence, developing tools to help law enforcement trace crime guns, and holding the gun industry accountable.

"People have to get to their angry moment, when they say 'I'm not complacent any more, I want to take action,' " said Dorf of Moms Demand Action. "For many people, this was their angry moment."

___

Visit The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.) at www.ocregister.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.