Earlier this month the Brady Bunch released a report which ranked the 50 states on the stance on Gun Control.

They ranked the states in several areas including:

1. Laws to Curb Firearm Trafficking
2. Background Checks
3. Child Safety
4. Assault Weapons Bands
5. Prevalence of “Gun Free” zones

Warner, over at STACLU did a nice little piece on this today - in fact reminding me that I did some comparisons that I should probably share.

Just out of curiosity, I decided to do some quick comparison. I took the Brady Report and compared it with the rates death due firearms. For the rates of death by firearm I used the CDC’s National Vital Statistics Report. Unfortunately, the latest report I could find that had a breakdown by state was 2003, so there is quite a gap between. However, given that the national average (which was available in the 2006 NVSR), has remained very similar to eh 2003 numbers, it is reasonable to assume we are not to far off.

So here is a simple table, comparing the Brady Report on the states with the most strict gun laws, and the CDC report of the states occurrence of Firearms related death. The state numbers are per 100,000 residents, so it is adjusted for population.

It should be noted that all Firearms death’s are included in the CDC numbers, which include homicide, suicide, and accidental death (self and other).

It is also interesting to note that the Brady Bunch did not include the District of Columbia in its finding. DC would probably have ranked number 1 in the list especially in like of the current Supreme Court Case, and it also ranks number 1 on my list of the highest number of gun related deaths per capita, a full 7.4 pts above its nearest competitor.

So, what do these statistics show us? While there is some merit (outside of the DC case stated above) that living in a state with freer gun laws results in more gun related fatalities, it is not quite so clear cut. Keeping DC out of the consideration, all of the main regions where firearms deaths are most likely to occur are areas with the lowest population density (Alaska, Louisana, New Mexico, Wyoming, Nevada). Also, many of the most restrictive states are also high on the gun death list (Maryland, California, Illinois). I thought about maping the chart above to states with CCW laws, and then rank by population density - but I will leave that for the experts.

What I really need to prove this out is recent data on crime related firearms deaths. The earliest data I have that separates out crime and accidental deaths is from 1993, and that is not valid because we know, from the US Department of Justice statistics that gun crime has fallen drastically since 1993. So, basically, the Brady list is pointless. The gap between the worst on there list (Oklahoma) and the best (California) is only 3 points, or 3 deaths in 100,000 people.