You are correct, "great" is probably not the correct word - I think the article claims that California is doing the "right" thing. And, of course, the people w

You are correct, "great" is probably not the correct word - I think the article claims that California is doing the "right" thing. And, of course, the people who wrote the article know in their hearts what the right thing is, regardless of evidence. The plot I posted shows that there isn't any correlation between gun ownership rates and the gun murder rates state by state. I haven't looked at the states behind the few outliers, but I suspect that people who do won't like what they find. It gets even murkier when you include gun suicides, which are half the deaths, in the polemics. People will always find a way, and some states can be more depressing, e.g. winter in New Hampshire. Edit: That 18 / 100,000 outlier seems to be bogus, I don't see it in the data table.