WASHINGTON, DC -Despite having one of the largest populations of any state in the union, New York still ranks near the bottom of the list when it comes to gun death rates.
Newly available data for 2014 reveals that states with weak gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the highest overall gun death rates in the nation, according to a Violence Policy Center (VPC) analysis of just-released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
In addition, states with the lowest overall gun death rates – such as New York State – have lower rates of gun ownership and some of the strongest gun violence prevention laws in the nation.
However, even in these states the human toll of gun violence is far above the gun death rate in other industrialized nations.
The VPC analysis refers to overall gun death rates in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available. The deaths include gun homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings.
The states with the five highest gun death rates include Alaska at no. 1 with 19.78 gun deaths per 100,000 people, followed by Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Montana.
The state with the lowest gun death rate is Hawaii with 2.82 gun deaths per 100,000 people, followed by Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut. In New York the gun death rate is 5.20 per 100,000… nearly 4 times lower than the states with the highest death rate.
The nationwide gun death rate in 2014 was 10.54. The total number of Americans killed by gunfire was 33,599 in 2014.
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