Annotation: This article presents a State-by-State ranking of gun control legislation and also offers a comparison of international firearm regulations and gun violence.
Abstract: This largely statistical article ranks each State based on its level of gun control legislation. A score of 100 percent represents the greatest level of gun control. In this analysis, the highest ranking a State received was that of 76 for Massachusetts and the lowest ranking was -10 percent for Maine. Forty-six States received a ranking of below 50 percent for gun control legislation. The seven highest-ranking States were Massachusetts, Hawaii, California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, and Illinois. The 20 lowest ranking States received a score of less than 0 percent; these included Indiana, Arizona, Kansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Idaho, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Oklahoma, among others. The article also offers a table that compares firearm characteristics among high-crime countries. The table lists whether a country requires licensing of gun owners, registration of firearms, other restrictions, percent of households with firearms, gun homicide per 100,000, gun suicide per 100,000, and the total intentional gun death rate per 100,000. The analysis illustrates that the United States has the least gun control and the most intentional gun deaths of all 23 the countries analyzed.