just curious if theres been people who've moved to AZ , maybe in search of firearm freedoms, low taxes, etc. and came to miss CA and moved back?

There has been a massive net outflow of reasonably well-to-do people from California (millions).  The new arrivals are not what's causing the population growth.  The replacements are mostly low income people and families in search of a better life (more money, opportunities).  I could show the report if you anyone was cautious/suspicious of my statements of fact.

I've known people that as they got older were not able to handle the extremes of weather.

But I suspect that most retirees know what they are getting in to.

If your figures are per year, I doubt them.  Many tens of thousands to low hundred thousands I believe.  A large fraction of those are retirees, who are selling their million dollar houses in California, and taking their 401k and pension from the big employers (Hughes, HP, Lockheed, IBM, Apple, ...), and settling in places that are (a) cheaper and (b) have lower taxes, or (c) where they still have family connections.  Several colleagues of mine have moved to Tennessee, Ohio, Washington state, and Oregon, after retirement (I'm nearing retirement age myself, so I know a lot of people who are in their 60s).

Another large set of people move from the high-coast coastal areas (LA, bay area) to nicer and more rural areas (gold country, sierra foothills, Atascadero and SLO, Hollister).

There is a HUGE number of people moving into California, which is why the population is growing rapidly.  A lot of those are young recent college graduates.  The single largest group are CS and engineering majors, who go to work for Facebook, Apple, Google, LinkedIn, and so on.  But even those big employers are hiring lots of PhDs, MBAs, technicians, cafeteria cooks, bus drivers, and so on.  I would not call them "low income", since even a young software engineer with just a B.S. degree will be making close to 100K a year.  Given housing prices in LA and in particular the bay area, that might feel like low income, but it is way above what statisticians call the poverty line.  Relatively few of those are H-1 visa workers, since just about none of those visas are issued today, compared to demand.

As far as true low income is concerned (farm workers, gardeners, domestic help): There is actually a huge outflow of those.  If you talk to people in agriculture (and I have quite a few friends who are in the christmas tree farm and fruit/nut orchard business), it's very hard to find farm labor right now.  A lot of the illegal ones have returned to Mexico and other central american places, because the economy there has picked up, and they are afraid of tougher immigration rules (which have not actually happened, but the rhetoric is there).  And with the growth in high-tech comes a huge growth in service jobs (cooks and dishwashers for all the Facebook and Google free eating places, plus gardeners for their well-groomed campuses, and janitors), which has wiped out the market for legal unskilled workers elsewhere.  And while service jobs in high-tech are not well paid on the scale of software engineers, they are paid significantly better than they were before.  The labor market in California is really wiped clean right now, with a huge demand for workers, and resulting inflow.

I have relative on my wife's side of the extended family who retired/sold his business, property, home, etc., and moved to a semi-rural(?) part of Georgia, with the traditional big pot of money left over.  Is getting his first taste of humidity and thunderstorms, etc., and is not quite as thrilled as he was.  OTOH, have a fiend who moved back to Pennsylvania, has property on a lake and loves it, even the winter.

Here are some figures from the report -

Immigration: 4,374,285
Emmigration: -3,583,285
Net change: 791,000

That's 3.6 million people who've left.

Picking a place to retire is a key part of the retirement strategy.   It is quite a puzzle.  Local culture, weather, access to quality health care, low taxes, low cost of energy, cost of food, maintenance, insurance,... all are factors in the decision. Finding the data to support the decision is very difficult.

my question really stems from us moving from San Diego to Phoenix and coming to realize its not all as is presented sometimes. yes gun rights are awesome. totally.
but cost of living is on par with Socal without some the , i cant really find a word that describes the lifestyle of Southern California-but for us, its a laid back easiness that is not driven by what you can and cant do because of the weather.
we are not golden retirees, just a working family.
there are specific things we come to miss about Socal. of course I can draw up a list of negatives of CA. however, im begining to understand why when we told our neighbors and new friends that we moved from to SD to Arizona, they paused and asked why??

Over the years, we've met or worked with a bunch of people that have moved from AZ to CA.  They wonder why we would move that way.  Mostly they cite the weather and crime, but a lot also call out the beaches, performing arts, cultural arts to some minor extent, Phoenix can be boring, Tucson is boring, etc.  The higher cost of living, taxes, etc doesn't seem to be enough to make them want to move back.  None of them were gunowners , either.  Did note that the illegal problem was about the same in the metro areas.

When pressed snakes and bugs are mentioned, "Oh yeah, we don't have to be worried about scorpions here."

San Diego is pretty hard to beat. We live in the So Cal high desert, and we bought a house in Lake Havasu and love it there. The crime is nil compared to the shithole the high desert has become. The town has almost everything we need, and way more recreation opportunities. Our kids can play in the city parks, and not have to worry about getting shot, jumped, or accosted by homeless drug addicts. The only thing LHC needs is a Costco.

This.  I live in the SoCal high desert, and moving to AZ would be awesome.  Literally no change in geography for me, and a huge dose of freedom.  My area here is conservative as conservative can be in CA, but every year our side's population is less.

I just bought a house in Havasu.  I still live in So. Cal, but I'll keep going there as much as I can, until I don't have to come back.

Let me know when you are there, we can go shooting. I spend a lot of time there in the winter.