The state geography of gun deaths
How safe are you from dying from gun violence? Where you live matters
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Guns have been a part of American life throughout its existence. They are one of the defining characteristics of its culture. Right now it seems nearly inconceivable that the number of guns in America will significantly decline anytime soon, despite the public outcry to the spate of atrocities that young men have committed over the past few weeks. I truly hope the work of inspired activists and law makers will have a major impact, but it’s difficult for me to be optimistic.
But those heinous acts that shattered Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas and many others are only a small part of the burden that gun violence places on us Americans every day. The numbers are sobering: around 40,000 people are killed every year, well over 100 every day.
People may wonder if there are places that are safer to live when it comes to gun violence. It turns out that there are: gun-related death rates vary considerably from state to state and county to county. In 2020, which is the most recent data year available from the CDC, Hawaii saw the lowest rate of guns deaths at 3.6 per 100,000 people. The worst state? Mississippi, with a rate of 27.6 deaths per 100,000.
The top five states were Hawaii (3.6), Massachusetts (3.9), New Jersey (5.0), Rhode Island (5.1) and New York(5.4). At the other end of the scale, the five most dangerous places were Mississippi (27.6), Wyoming (26.4), Louisiana (25.5), Alaska (23.9) and Alabama and Missouri both saw 23.2 people out of every 100,000 killed by guns that year.
I’ve been seeing quotes from people saying that there’s really nothing that can be done to stop gun violence, that if someone really wants to do damage with an AR-15 or some other military-style weapon there’s no way to stop them. Those people are conflating individual motivations with things that can be done at the population level to affect the RATES at which people use guns to kill either themselves or other people. In other words, lives can be saved by putting measures such as background checks, firearm safety training, gun licensing requirements and various other gun violence prevention measures into place.
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has put together state scorecards that rank each state’s efforts to prevent gun violence. In 2021 the Center ranked California at number one for its efforts, and Arkansas dead last. I took those rankings and correlated them with the same state-level gun death data shown in the map above. Just to make sure I used both the crude and age-adjusted rates - that didn’t make any real difference. In short, as you can see in the graphic below, the ranking from the Giffords Center was significantly correlated with the rate of gun deaths recorded in each state. That is, as the Giffords rank for a state improved this was related to a lower rate of gun deaths in that state. And as the Giffords rank declined the rate of gun deaths rose in that state. The scatter plots on the lower left of the graphic illustrate the correlation of around 0.7 (which is high, as these things go) between the Giffords rank and the rate of deaths.
Analysis performed with Jamovi
Crucially, what this means is that state-level anti-gun violence measures make a difference: they prevent people from being killed. So when you hear anyone say some version of, “There’s nothing to prevent an individual from grabbing a gun and killing someone,” you may want to gently remind them that, yes, there really are things that can be done to prevent that.
In a future post I plan to look at the best and worst counties in the U.S. when it comes to gun violence. I also plan to look at rates for suicides versus homicides, so stay tuned for that. Until then, take care.
Karl Pearson
If you like what I’m doing here you can support future efforts by buying me a coffee below. Thanks!