INDReporter

No surprise: weak gun laws = high gun violence

by Walter Pierce

As sensible firearm legislation withers on the vine in Congress and the gun nuts at the NRA gin up fear and paranoia, a newly released report trumpets what we've intuitively known since musket days: lax gun laws and high rates of gun violence go hand in glove, and Louisiana comes out on "top" in both.

As sensible firearm legislation withers on the vine in Congress and the gun nuts at the NRA gin up fear and paranoia, a newly released report trumpets what we've intuitively known since musket days: lax gun laws and high rates of gun violence go hand in glove, and Louisiana comes out on "top" in both.

Using 10 data sets ranging from overall firearm deaths and firearm homicides to the number of law enforcement agents killed with a firearm, the "forward"-leaning Center for American Progress' analysis finds that 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."

Louisiana leads the nation in gun violence, followed in descending order by Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, New Mexico, Missouri, Arkansas and Georgia. The states with the most stringent gun laws and corresponding lowest gun violence rates are Nebraska, Maine, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Iowa, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Hawaii.

Notice a pattern? Yeah, that "red state/blue state" thing is happening. In general.

CAP concludes: "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."

Read more here.