Gunfire accounted for 45,222 deaths in the United States in 2020. This figure included homicides, suicides, accidents, and other incidents where a fatality was caused by a gun. Relative to the size of the U.S. population, that translated to a gun death rate of 13.7 deaths per 100,000 population. Breaking down gun deaths by region, New England had the lowest regional gun death rate, while the Southeast had the highest.  Unsurprisingly, nine of the ten U.S states that, according to research from the Giffords Law Center, had the weakest gun control laws (as of 10/1/22), also recorded gun death rates in 2020 that were above the national average.  Among the ten states with the weakest gun control laws, only South Dakota had a below-average gun death rate. The other nine states in the group had a 2020 gun death rate that was at least 24% above the national average.  Collectively, the ten states with the weakest gun control laws had a gun death rate that was almost 50% higher than the national average.  Mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics provides the following details about gun death rates in weak gun control states.

Gun Death Rates in Weak Gun Control States

**	State	Deaths	Population	Death Rate*
41	Alaska	175	731,158	23.9
42	Arizona	1,265	7,421,401	17.0
43	Kentucky	902	4,477,251	20.1
44	South Dakota	120	892,717	13.4
45	Mississippi	818	2,966,786	27.6
46	Kansas	494	2,913,805	17.0
47	Missouri	1,426	6,151,548	23.2
48	Idaho	321	1,826,913	17.6
49	Wyoming	154	582,328	26.4
50	Arkansas	673	3,030,522	22.2
	Sub-total	6,348	30,994,429	20.5
	U.S.	45,222	329,484,123	13.7

(**) status of gun control laws ranked strongest to weakest
(*) number of gun-related deaths per 100,000 population

Report Period: 2020

Source: CDC Wonder. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2020 on CDC WONDER Online Database, released in 2021. Data are from the Multiple Cause of Death Files, 1999-2020, as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program. Accessed on October 1, 2022