>That doesn’t matter. California has much stricter gun laws and there have been plenty of shootings there. One thing we have learned is that these shootings happen all over the country. Stricter gun laws via state doesn’t change much at all

Ultimately, the solution has to be federal and every super lax state can and will undermine the stricter laws. States surrounded by likeminded states, like us, do benefit from that collective mindset making it that much tougher. RI's gun laws benefit from NY/NJ/CT/MA being strong too.

Outside of Alaska and Hawaii, every state's laws are always gun law efficacy is going to be limited by its neighbors. That being said, i strongly disagree with the implication that state level laws are somehow not effective or useless. That's disingenuous logic and usually only invoked as an excuse for inaction.

And FWIW, California ranks 44th in gun deaths per capita. There's still room for improvement but the states with notoriously lax gun laws in the country see a LOT more violence. Their neighbor Arizona has an F rating from most gun control advocacy groups and their firearm death rate is over twice as high as California.