Well, in part, it's like someone who was unemployed during COVID in 2021 saying that he made 43% more income in 2022. The year 2021 was the all-time high for homicides by firearm in California. And what does the decade-long trend actually look like? Here's a handy chart: https://hhfund.maps.arcgis.com/apps/das ... 91cc1aac50.
Nothing to really brag about, 2022 holds the #2 all-time high homicide by firearm count.
Gavin Newsome became governor as of January 2019. Comparing the 2018 gun homicide data to 2022 and using only the rounded numbers from the chart, gun homicides are up 30.77%. From the 2014 numbers, they're up 38.46% as of end-of-year 2022. (Newsome was first elected lieutenant governor in 2010 and stayed in that office from 2011 until he took office as governor.)
However, though I can't readily find any current rate-per-100,000 data (the FBI's Crime Data Explorer "Expanded Homicide Data" still has no information for 2022--and the data has gone all wonky as of 2021 due to the changeover to the NIBRS system--so I don't know where Newsom is getting his numbers), California was one of 18 states whose population declined from 2021 to 2022. According to the Census Bureau, they lost 0.88% of their population, or a decrease of over 343,200 people. Evidently gun homicide deaths decreased by about 100 from 2021 to 2022, but the population was 343,200 fewer.