America Under the Gun: A 50-State Analysis of Gun Violence and its Link to Weak State Gun Laws

n the aftermath of mass shootings and other gun-related tragedies, there is often a surge of interest on the part of community leaders, social-science researchers, and elected officials to root out the causes of gun violence in an effort to prevent such tragedies from occurring again. Any study into the causes of gun violence is necessarily complicated, however, as there are innumerable factors that contribute to the nature and prevalence of gun-related violence in any community.Despite this complex web of factors that influence the rate of gun violence, this report finds a clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws. Across the key indicators of gun violence that we analyzed, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have an aggregate level of gun violence that is more than twice as high—104 percent higher, in fact—than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.The data analyzed in this report relate to the following 10 indicators of gun violence:1. Overall firearm deaths in 20102. Overall firearm deaths from 2001 through 20103. Firearm homicides in 20104. Firearm suicides in 20105. Firearm homicides among women from 2001 through 20106. Firearm deaths among children ages to 17, from 2001 through 20107. Law-enforcement agents feloniously killed with a firearm from 2002 through 20118. Aggravated assaults with a firearm in 20119. Crime-gun export rates in 200910. Percentage of crime guns with a short "time to crime" in 2009Using these data, we rank each state according to the rate of each indicator of gun violence and create an overall ranking of the states across all 10 indicators, resulting in an overall state ranking for the prevalence of gun violence. Finally, we compare this overall state gun-violence ranking with a Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence ranking of states based on the strength of their gun laws.Our analysis determined that the following are the 10 states, by rank, that suffer the highest levels of gun violence:1. Louisiana2. Alaska3. Alabama4. Arizona5. Mississippi6. South Carolina7. New Mexico8. Missouri9. Arkansas10. GeorgiaThe Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence analysis shows that eight of these states are among the 25 states with the weakest gun laws.While the strength of a state's gun laws is just one factor in the prevalence of gun-related violence in the state and cannot alone account for gun violence, there is a clear link between weak gun laws and high levels of gun violence across the United States