For Release: Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, New Mexico, and Alaska Have Highest Gun Death Rates in the Nation
Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Hawaii Have Lowest Gun Death Rates in the Nation
Washington, DC — New data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that states with the highest rates of overall gun death in the nation are those with weak gun violence prevention laws and high rates of gun ownership according to a new Violence Policy Center (VPC) analysis.
In contrast, the five states with the lowest overall gun death rates have stronger gun violence prevention laws and lower rates of gun ownership.
The VPC analysis uses just-published 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) WONDER data and presents overall gun death rates state by state for 2023, which is the most recent year for which data are available. The deaths include gun homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings. A table of the states with the five highest overall gun death rates and the five lowest overall gun death rates is below. For a list of overall gun death rates in all 50 states, see https://www.vpc.org/state-firearm-death-rates-ranked-by-rate-2023/.
The state with the highest gun death rate in 2023 was Mississippi, followed by Louisiana, Alabama, New Mexico, and Alaska. The state with the lowest gun death rate in the nation was Massachusetts, followed by New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Hawaii.
The total number of Americans killed by gunfire in 2023 was 46,728, a three percent decrease from 48,204 in 2022. The nationwide overall gun death rate decreased from 14.2 per 100,000 in 2022 to 13.7 per 100,000 in 2023.
While the number of firearm homicides decreased by nearly nine percent from 19,651 in 2022 to 17,927 in 2023, firearm suicides increased by one percent — from 27,032 in 2022 to 27,300 in 2023.
VPC Government Affairs Director Kristen Rand states, “America’s gun problem is unrelenting and the conclusion is inescapable that the crisis is driven by exposure to firearms.”
States with strong gun violence prevention laws were defined as those that add significant state regulation that is absent from federal law, such as restricting access to particularly hazardous and deadly types of firearms (for example, assault weapons), setting minimum safety standards for firearms and/or requiring a permit to purchase a firearm, and restrictions on the open and concealed carrying of firearms in public. States with weaker gun violence prevention laws were defined as those that add little or nothing to federal law and have permissive laws governing the open or concealed carrying of firearms in public.
State gun ownership rates were obtained from the April 2020 RAND article by Terry L. Schell, et al., “State-Level Estimates of Household Firearm Ownership,” which is the most recent comprehensive published data available on state gun ownership. This publication can be viewed here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/tools/TL354.html.
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The Violence Policy Center is a national educational organization working to stop gun death and injury. Follow the VPC on X/Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
