State Gun Safety Policies Earn High Marks in National Ranking

By Hugh McQuaid

December 26 @ 5:00 am

Connecticut has enacted the third-strongest gun safety laws in the nation, according to an annual scorecard by the Giffords Law Center, which awarded the state an “A” grade on the strength of its policies and its low levels of gun violence.

The annual assessment by the gun violence prevention organization found Connecticut behind only California and New Jersey in a ranking of the safest gun policies in the country. The top three performing states remain unchanged from the Giffords Law Center’s 2023 scorecard.

The law center placed Connecticut among just five states to earn an “A” grade in this year’s assessment.

In a press release last week, Giffords Executive Director Emma Brown said the scorecard served as an annual reminder of the inconsistency of America’s gun policies.

“Gun violence is now the number one killer of children in the United States, and they are measurably safer in some states than others. That is unacceptable,” Brown said. “Gun violence is preventable, and the overwhelming majority of Americans, including Republicans, independents, and gun owners, support commonsense solutions.”

Although the group cited support for gun safety policies from Americans across the political spectrum, the center’s scorecard depicts a stark ideological divide between states that experience the highest and lowest rates of gun deaths.

For instance, Connecticut — where voters have elected a Democratic governor and strong Democratic majorities to both chambers of the legislature — experienced just 6.2 gun deaths per 100,000 residents, according to the scorecard. In fact, of the five states identified by Giffords as experiencing the lowest rates of gun deaths — Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Hawaii — each have Democratic governors and legislative majorities.

Meanwhile, states that experienced the highest rates of gun deaths were often led by Republican governors and Republican legislatures. For comparison, Mississippi experienced the highest rate of gun deaths with 29.4 per 100,000 residents, followed by Louisiana with 28.1 and Alabama with 25.7 deaths per 100,000 residents.

Though the Giffords Law Center has long praised Connecticut policies like universal background checks, risk protection orders, safe storage requirements and assault weapon restrictions, the group credited the state for a recent investment of $8 million in violence prevention programs.

This month’s gun safety scorecard follows a recent study by the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, which concluded that risk protection orders — a policy developed in Connecticut and adopted by other states — should be a key component in public health efforts to reduce suicides.