Yes. It's a jumble, but it implies California is doing great. Actually, it's not. Besides, it appears that the gun murder rate is independent of gun ownership:
It doesn't say that California is doing great. It says that of all the gun laws that California has in place, only 3 have any research behind them to show that is is effective. The other laws may or may not help but the evidence is flimsy.
The point of the entire article is that people are just using simple graphs like the one you linked to without actually doing any studying and then making laws based upon some perceived correlation. California is strict with its rules but it doesn't say that it's a good thing.
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.
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