
California Tops the Nation for Strongest Gun Laws, But Gun Deaths Are Still Rising, New Report Finds
The analysis compared state rankings from 2014 to 2023 and paired them with gun death rates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It found that even in states with some of the strictest gun laws, gun death rates have continued to rise, highlighting a complex national crisis where legislation alone may not be enough. State 2023 Rank 2014 Rank Gun Death Rate (2023) 10-Year Change California 1 1 8.25 per 100K +8.49% New Jersey 2 3 4.66 per 100K –10.30% Connecticut 3 2 6.20 per 100K +19.32% Illinois 4 8 13.48 per 100K +46.52% New York 5 5 4.80 per 100K +9.15%
California held steady in first place over the decade, demonstrating the state's longstanding commitment to gun safety through universal background checks, red flag laws, and an assault weapons ban. Despite this, it saw an 8.49% increase in gun deaths per 100,000 residents over the last 10 years.
New Jersey, however, stands out as the only top-ranked state to reduce its gun death rate, down 10.30% since 2014. This achievement, combined with its climb from third to second place in the Giffords ranking, makes New Jersey a standout example of how legislation, enforcement, and local action can work together to reduce firearm-related fatalities.
In contrast, Illinois saw a dramatic 46.52% increase in gun deaths, even as it rose from 8th to 4th place in legislative strength. Experts note that urban violence, access to firearms from neighboring states, and systemic inequality may all contribute to the rise, indicating that strong laws can be undermined by factors outside a state's borders. State 2023 Rank 2014 Rank Gun Death Rate (2023) 10-Year Change Wyoming 50 44 22.36 per 100K +40.63% Missouri 48 44 21.46 per 100K +37.59% Arkansas 48 32 22.10 per 100K +32.32% Kentucky 47 47 18.66 per 100K +29.58% Idaho 46 39 18.36 per 100K +41.23%
At the other end of the spectrum, Wyoming ranks 50th in the nation, making it the state with the most permissive gun laws. The state's firearm death rate has soared over 40% in a decade, now exceeding 22 deaths per 100,000 people, nearly three times higher than California's.
Arkansas experienced the sharpest decline in legislative strength, dropping from 32nd to 48th place over the last ten years. Meanwhile, gun death rates in Missouri, Kentucky, Idaho, and Montana continue to climb, reflecting the potential consequences of relaxed firearm regulation.
'There's no single solution to gun violence,' said a spokesperson for High Rise Financial . 'But our data suggests that states with stricter laws tend to have lower gun death rates overall. The challenge is that even the strongest laws can't operate in a vacuum. Social, economic, and regional dynamics all play a role.'
For example, New York's rate of 4.8 deaths per 100,000 residents remains among the lowest in the nation — yet the state still experienced a 9.15% increase in the past ten years. Meanwhile, highly ranked Connecticut saw a surprising 19.32% increase, despite consistently strong legislative frameworks.
Gun law strength rankings were sourced from the Giffords Law Center's annual scorecards, which assign each U.S. state a ranking based on the scope and strictness of its firearm legislation. Data was collected for the years 2014 and 2023 to evaluate changes over time. Gun death rates were pulled from the CDC Wonder Tool, comparing rates per 100,000 residents in 2014 and 2023 to calculate percentage changes.
TIME BUSINESS NEWS

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Michael Bloomberg urges Republicans to oust RFK Jr, ‘peddler of junk science'
Billionaire, former New York City mayor and philanthropist Michael Bloomberg is calling on Senate Republicans to oust Robert F Kennedy Jr from his post as Trump's health secretary. Kennedy was arguably the nation's most prominent conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic when he was confirmed by the Senate, and he has spent much of his tenure throwing vaccine policy into upheaval amid an historic measles outbreak. 'Kennedy, who has no training in medicine or health, has long been the nation's foremost peddler of junk science and the crackpot conspiracy theories that flow from it,' wrote Bloomberg in an opinion piece for his eponymous news outlet. Kennedy became health secretary after joining the Trump campaign in August 2024, and helping coin the term 'make America healthy again'. Although Kennedy has spent most of his public appearances campaigning for healthier foods, often with a flimsy basis in nutrition science, most of his policy changes have focused on vaccines. He fired all 17 members of a key vaccine advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and reformulated the panel with ideological allies – including advocates directly from the anti-vaccine movement. He also made Covid-19 shots more difficult to access; oversaw the cancellation of research into vaccines and vaccine hesitancy; spread inflammatory information about vaccines and equivocated about their benefits. 'The greatest danger in elevating him to [Health and Human Services] (HHS) secretary was always that he would use his position to undermine public confidence in vaccines, which would lead to needless suffering and even death,' Bloomberg argued. 'And so it has come to pass.' Bloomberg said that Kennedy's actions were predictable, but that Senate Republicans either 'deceived themselves' or 'buckled to political pressure' to confirm Kennedy. He urged Republicans to pressure the White House to constrain Kennedy 'or fire him'. If Americans die unnecessarily, Bloomberg said, Senate Republicans will pay at the ballot box. The upheaval in vaccine policy comes as the CDC is tracking an historic measles outbreak that began in an under-vaccinated community in Texas. More than 1,300 confirmed measles cases have been reported since mid-July – though experts believe the true tally is far higher. That is the worst case count since 1992 at only halfway through the year. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to medicine. A supremely effective vaccine, preventing 97% of cases with two doses, meant it was nevertheless eliminated in 2000. Experts now believe the US may be entering a 'post-herd immunity' era. Three people have died in the 2025 outbreak, including two healthy children and an adult. All were unvaccinated. Measles kills between one-three children per 1,000 due to respiratory or neurological complications, according to the CDC. The disease can also cause permanent disability due to brain swelling, and weaken the immune system against future infections. 'In the aftermath of the deaths, he did not use his position to urge parents to vaccinate their children, or warn of the dangers of failing to do so, or declare vaccines safe, or allay misplaced concerns about them,' wrote Bloomberg. 'Instead, he did what he has been doing for decades: He presented the safety and efficacy of vaccines as an open question for individuals to decide. Not surprisingly, the outbreak continued – and has worsened,' he wrote. The Guardian has contacted HHS for comment.


Politico
3 days ago
- Politico
Republicans are ready to revive stalled health care legislation. Dems want the GOP to pay a price.
He added: 'I also think it's a reminder of how [Republicans are] filing legislation to undo what they did three weeks ago. What's hilarious is they are either saying they didn't know what was in their own legislation or now they want to get away from what they voted for in their own legislation.' Neal was referring to legislation from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that would roll back major changes to Medicaid — which he just voted for as part of the megabill. There's been chatter for months about reviving a sweeping bipartisan health care package that was on track for passage last December as part of a larger government funding bill, but House GOP leaders dropped the health care provisions after Trump and Elon Musk said that funding bill was overly broad and threatened to tank it. A major part of the health package included proposals to crack down on PBMs, who critics accuse of charging higher prices for medications to health plans than the reimbursements they send to pharmacies, among other things. As Smith alluded to, the Ways and Means Committee is also eyeing legislation from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) for inclusion in the new health package. Kelly's bill, which was marked up and approved by the panel last summer, would allow weight loss drugs for treatment of obesity, like Wegovy and Zepbound, to qualify for Medicare coverage. Federal law currently bans Medicare from covering drugs for weight loss, even though Medicare covers pharmaceuticals for other conditions such as heart disease. The drugs are expensive and a Biden administration plan to increase coverage of them, which Trump shelved in April, would have cost $25 billion over ten years, according to the agency that runs Medicare. Another bill sponsored by Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — which would reauthorize a partnership between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health programs to offer free breast cancer screenings to low-income, uninsured and underinsured women — is also under consideration for that package. But Democrats are furious with Republicans for first plowing through Medicaid changes in the megabill, then passing $9 billion in funding cuts across an array of federal programs, including those related to global health initiatives. 'If we keep making progress on [appropriations] … there is a chance we can do the health care package,' Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said Thursday following the Senate's vote on Trump's rescissions request. 'But that chance got worse overnight.' Coons has previously co-sponsored legislation with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) to change how PBMs calculate health insurance deductibles. Marshall said last week that coming back to the table on bipartisan PBM legislation was 'a top priority.' But Democrats are also pointing out that Republicans are looking at policies that would reduce drug costs, and expand federal health insurance coverage of drugs, right after they stripped hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid.

14-07-2025
At Faith Office luncheon, Trump talks gas prices, transgender athletes and has strong words for his foes
It was the first White House Faith Office summit with business leaders, but that didn't stop President Donald Trump from using expletives and charged language against his foes in a room full of business leaders who contribute to faith-based charitable work. For nearly an hour, Trump rambled about multiple topics his administration has tackled so far, ranging from tariffs to transgender people in sports while veering into tangents about his previous legal battles and first administration. He spent little time, however, getting into the specifics of his newly established Faith Office. Trump touted recent actions he made limiting the participation of transgender women in women's sports, arguing how only two genders are recognized in America. "We've restored the fundamental principle that God created two genders, male and female, that was a tough one. And we're defending parents' rights where the parents' rights have been taken away from them in schools. You look at some of these school boards, it's like they're brutal dictatorships. And we brought it all back." The crowd cheered at Trump's rhetoric; however, transgender advocates have argued how notions like that hurt the transgender community. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines sex as "an individual's biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes." In his freewheeling speech, Trump argued he was centering American culture around faith in his freewheeling speech, heavily criticizing Democrats as unfaithful. 'I'll tell you religion took a big hit because of the way they treated all of us," Trump said of Democrats. "And, we now have a confident nation, an optimistic nation, and we have one nation under God. And we'll always keep that term." Trump also directly attacked former President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, arguing without evidence that Biden wasn't faithful enough and sought to persecute religious leaders. 'I think one of the reasons we won so bad is they really wanted to take God and religion out of your lives, and there was nobody to, you know, look up to. There was just nobody. It was – we were freewheeling and we can't free wheel. No, we have to bring religion back into the country. And we're starting to do that, I think, at a very high level,' Trump said. 'As president, I've ended the radical left war on faith, and we're once again protecting religious freedom instead of destroying it. And God is once again welcomed back into our public square. It's very important,' he added. Trump used profanity while talking about his indictments, calling them "bull----" and other explicit language throughout his speech in front of the faith-based group. His attacks also extended to Republicans, calling Federal Reserve Chair Jermone Powell "a knucklehead. Stupid guy," and attacking the intelligence of politicians like former Sen. Mitt Romney and his former Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Trump lightly talked about his faith when reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the attempted assassination on him in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump stated that he was saved by God to make the country great. 'It was only one year ago this week that my time on Earth nearly ended. And if you look at that, God was with me. Because that's something in theory, I should not -- I should not be with you,' he said. 'I believe it that my life was saved by God to really make America great again.' On the campaign trail, the president spent time courting faith leaders throughout the country, often refusing to soften his language in those venues as well. Trump has previously even quipped about how Franklin Graham, the president of Samaritan's Purse and a Trump ally, would ask him to temper his cursing. ''Mr. President, it's Franklin Graham, and I just want to tell you, I love what you do, I love what you say. I love your stories. I think they're great, and keep telling them, but they'd be even better if you wouldn't use foul language,'' Trump told a campaign rally in October. 'So I thought about it, and I said, 'I'm going to try.' And I did try, and I'm not sure, I'm not sure I'd make the emphasis quite as good."