🌅 Gun Safety Laws Reduce Gun Deaths

SOURCE

Everytown for Gun Safety

WHAT TO KNOW

• Everytown for Gun Safety released its 2025 State Gun Law Rankings, scoring each state based on the strength of its gun safety laws and comparing the score with the state’s gun violence rate. Everytown’s rankings show a “clear connection” between strong gun safety laws and lower rates of gun deaths, finding the U.S. could save 299,000 lives over the next decade if every state had gun death rates on par with the rates in the nine states with the strongest gun safety laws.

WHY IT MATTERS

• California earned the top spot in Everytown’s rankings for the fourth consecutive year, followed by Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, and Connecticut in the top five (other research shows Californians are also around 25% less likely to die in a mass shooting than residents in other states). Idaho ranked last, just behind Mississippi and Arkansas, “leading” the pack of 13 states that lack even basic gun safety measures. Everytown found states that lack even basic gun safety measures—deemed “national failures” in the rankings—have gun death rates 2.5 times higher than the states with the strongest laws.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Research consistently shows stronger gun safety laws help reduce gun deaths, as do measures to help reduce the number of firearms within a given population. In line with that evidence, a new study led by researchers at Yale New Haven Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco found childhood and teenage firearm deaths rose significantly in states that loosened gun laws following the 2010 Supreme Court decision limiting local governments’ ability to restrict gun ownership.