For Release: Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama, and Missouri Have Highest Gun Death Rates in the Nation
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York 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 newly published 2022 CDC WONDER data and refers to overall gun death rates in 2022, 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 gun death rates and the five lowest gun death rates is below. For a list of gun death rates in all 50 states, see https://www.vpc.org/state-firearm-death-rates-ranked-by-rate-2022/.
The state with the highest gun death rate in 2022 was Mississippi, followed by Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama, and Missouri. The state with the lowest gun death rate in the nation was Rhode Island, followed by Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York.
The total number of Americans killed by gunfire in 2022 was 48,204, a one percent decrease from 48,830 in 2021. The nationwide gun death rate in 2022 decreased from 14.6 per 100,000 in 2021 to 14.2 per 100,000 in 2022.
While the number of firearm homicides decreased by six percent from 20,958 in 2021 to 19,651 in 2022, firearm suicides increased by almost three percent — from 26,328 in 2021 to 27,032 in 2022.
VPC Government Affairs Director Kristen Rand states, “America is facing an unprecedented gun violence crisis. The evidence could not be more compelling that our spiraling gun death rates are 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.
