California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) known as out Sen. John Cornyn on Monday after the Texas Republican shared a headline suggesting California’s strict gun legal guidelines don’t work to stop mass shootings.

“California Has Extra Than 100 Gun Legal guidelines. Why Don’t They Cease Extra Mass Shootings?” Cornyn tweeted, together with a New York Times article underneath the identical headline, within the wake of three mass shootings within the state which have left a minimum of 19 individuals lifeless.

Newsom shared Cornyn’s tweet, noting: “Texas’ gun dying price is 67% greater than California’s.”

That checks out. In terms of the speed of firearm deaths, California ranks among the many nation’s lowest, with 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 individuals in 2020, in keeping with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Texas, then again, had 14.2 gun deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in the identical yr. That’s greater than the nationwide price of 13.7 per 100,000.

Regardless, this month’s shootings have drawn renewed consideration to California’s gun legal guidelines ― the hardest within the nation.

Because the Instances famous in its article, the state has a patchwork of greater than 100 gun legal guidelines, together with bans on semiautomatic weapons and large-capacity magazines and restrictions in opposition to gun possession for home violence offenders and folks deemed to be a hazard to themselves or others.

It nonetheless wasn’t sufficient to stop this month’s tragedies. Gun security advocates are already mobilizing to fill the gaps that allowed them to occur, whereas gun rights defenders have seized on the shootings as proof gun legal guidelines don’t work. (Because the Instances additionally famous, they do: According to the Public Policy Institute of California, Californians are about 25% much less more likely to die in mass shootings.)

Cornyn, who’s among the top recipients in Congress of marketing campaign donations from gun rights lobbyists, was perceived to be including to that refrain when he shared the article.

Newsom wasn’t alone in pushing again, with commenters mentioning, amongst different stark statistics, that 5 of the 10 deadliest shootings in fashionable U.S. historical past occurred in Texas, which has among the most lax gun legal guidelines within the nation.