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By Joe Edwards
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U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Tuesday issued an advisory declaring that gun violence is a public health crisis.
His announcement comes as dozens of people were left wounded and several people killed following mass shootings in Alabama, Ohio and Arkansas.
With gun violence yet again back in the public eye, Newsweek has mapped the U.S. states that have the toughest gun laws.
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Giffords, a non-profit organization that seeks to tackle gun violence, shared a statement with Newsweek following the announcement, which read: "Giffords has advocated for a public health approach to gun violence since its founding in 2013.
"The advisory calls for closing loopholes in U.S. background check laws, requiring safe and secure storage of firearms, investing in community violence intervention, and increased oversight of the gun industry."
"I have seen firsthand how shootings are a major threat to Americans' lives and well-being, and our leaders must view the problem as the public health crisis it is," said former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who leads Giffords. "There are many powerful forces who downplay the threat of gun violence because the status quo benefits them financially or politically, and I'm grateful that Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy had the courage to do what he knows is best for our nation's health."
Legal experts at Giffords tracked and analyzed gun legislation across all 50 states throughout the year, assigning point values to laws and policies based on their strengths and weaknesses. These grades were then compared with the latest CDC gun death data to produce the rankings.
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The 10 states with the strongest gun laws, in ranking order, were California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland and Colorado. The states with the least stringent gun laws were Wyoming, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Idaho, Montana, Mississippi, South Dakota, Kansas and Arizona.
The report gave California the highest ranking for gun law strictness, citing strengthened concealed carry laws and $3 million of investment in gun violence research, among other reasons.
New Jersey came in second, due to $14.5 million of investment in community violence intervention and strengthened penalties for firearms trafficking.
In third was Connecticut, which Giffords said was due to changes in the state including the prohibition of open carry and ghost guns, the enactment of a safe storage law, and the requirement of long guns to be sold with a locking device similar to handguns.
Wyoming received the lowest ranking in this regard. Giffords said no significant gun legislation had been enacted in 2023 and that each year, 137 people die from gun violence in Wyoming.
The data also ranked states on gun deaths per 100,000 people.
Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama and Montana were among the states with the highest rate of gun deaths, while Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Jersey and New York had the lowest rates of gun deaths.
Newsweek has previously mapped the states with the highest rates of firearm deaths.
According to a 2024 report, Mississippi had the highest rate of gun deaths of any U.S. state, with a gun death rate at 18.2 deaths per 100,000 people.
The Magnolia State had 536 gun deaths in 2022 from a population of just under 3 million.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Murthy said: "People want to be able to walk through their neighborhoods and be safe."
"America should be a place where all of us can go to school, go to work, go to the supermarket, go to our house of worship, without having to worry that that's going to put our life at risk."
Do you have a story we should be covering? Do you have any questions about gun control or gun-related deaths in your state? Contact LiveNews@newsweek.com
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