This article is specifically about lawful carrying, not ownership. Criminals generally don't care whether carrying is lawful or not, so you wouldn't expect this particular law to matter a lot.
There just aren't a lot of cases where someone without any criminal intent carrying a gun all of a sudden gets mad and starts shooting people over an insult or something.
You are kind of right that the sheer volume of guns in the US, more than one per person (even if you count babies), could contribute to the homicide rate by making it easier for prohibited owners to still acquire a gun. But even that is complicated and has a lot of nuance.
The murders are very localized here to areas which throw off the average, and are much more strongly associated with factors other than guns. If you aren't in one of those areas, the murder rate is much lower.
In my opinion, guns are mostly fine most places in the US. But the general availability of guns does enable volent areas to be more violent based on specific local problems.
I haven't heard that any of the suspects in the two events on 6th street were carrying illegally or were already criminals (they could have been).
We seem killing more people here in TX already. Letting more drunks have the right to carry and conceal isn't gonna make things better. Maybe it won't make things worse either but it's already pretty bad.
California and Texas have similar homicide rates: 4.3 vs 4.9. Both numbers are low in the sense that homicide isn't something you should be afraid of in either state, unless you are in a specifically risky place or situation.
And regarding your anecdotes, it's doubtful to me that a law would prevent many of those people from carrying a gun. Maybe some, but nothing that would show much signal in aggregate data.
CA has a much poorer population at the bottom end, the price of living is 70% higher, multiple-point higher unemployment, less space, lower education outcomes, etc, etc, etc.
But I don't follow your point. Why would the parent "Get the F Out" of Texas if the murder rate is both low and comparable to the most obvious alternative?
Okay, maybe I didn't get your point. You introduced CA into this, but igetspam didn't say GTFOTX-and-go-to-CA. I see that you're using it because lots of people do look at the two states as two options for setting up shop.
I guess I was really pointing out that parts of CA has much bigger problems that make it ill-advised to compare state-for-state. Maybe that's unfair but they're both pretty colossal states.
And there are other options. Portland, Seattle, etc.
I should have put it as "Texas is in the middle of the pack in the US". But there are at least a couple ways that could be challenged as well: (a) middle of a list of states is not the same as having equal populations above and below; (b) it raises the question of whether the U.S. murder rate is a reasonable benchmark.
On HN, really anything is subject to some kind of challenge.
I like comparing the two states because they are both big (and therefore not as subject to cherry-picking) and have fairly different governing philosophies.
At the end of the day, you don't choose a state based on minimizing your chances of lightning strikes. You stop climbing trees in the middle of a thunderstorm and you forget about it.
Maybe you'd choose specific cities or areas, but state is kind of ridiculous.
There just aren't a lot of cases where someone without any criminal intent carrying a gun all of a sudden gets mad and starts shooting people over an insult or something.
You are kind of right that the sheer volume of guns in the US, more than one per person (even if you count babies), could contribute to the homicide rate by making it easier for prohibited owners to still acquire a gun. But even that is complicated and has a lot of nuance.
The murders are very localized here to areas which throw off the average, and are much more strongly associated with factors other than guns. If you aren't in one of those areas, the murder rate is much lower.
In my opinion, guns are mostly fine most places in the US. But the general availability of guns does enable volent areas to be more violent based on specific local problems.