The gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety releases an annual report ranking states on a scale from “National Leaders” to “National Failures,” with, as you might expect, “National Failures” representing the freest states. Ultimately, the organization employs some oddly weighted criteria to determine that states with stricter gun laws have fewer firearm-related deaths.
The issue with that claim is that it is so provably false. Here are five reasons why you should take Everytown’s rankings with a pound, not a grain, of salt.
- Combining a bunch of different gun laws into one number isn’t an accepted research practice.
John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), has been debunking annual reports like this for decades. Before Everytown, the Brady Campaign conducted a similar ranking using equally flawed measurements to obtain the results they desired.
“Lumping all the different gun-control numbers into one number is pretty arbitrary,” Lott said in an earlier analysis. “Not only is there the issue of what gun-control laws to include, there is also the issue of how to weight them.”
- By establishing its own parameters, Everytown can bias laws to achieve its desired results.
A closer look at the Everytown “study” reveals that those analyzing the data arbitrarily assign different gun-control schemes a varying number of points based on how “important” they deem them to be. For instance, the “Level 1” gun laws, worth up to six points each, include state background checks and/or purchase permits, red-flag laws, a lack of stand-your-ground laws and a requirement for a concealed-carry permit.
“This discretion allows a lot of possible data manipulation,” said Lott. “You can exclude or include what laws to use in constructing your score based on how it is correlated with homicides or suicides.”
It’s notable that Everytown’s four preferred laws that accumulate the most points all arguably conflict with the U.S. Constitution. Some have been declared unconstitutional by various courts and may need to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court, and others may be in the future.
There are 10 “Level 2” laws valued at three points each, including bans on “high-capacity” magazines and “assault weapons.” Sixteen additional gun laws are classified as “Level 3,” worth up to 1.5 points each, while another 20 laws are categorized as “Level 4,” valued at up to one point.
- The results don’t consistently reflect Everytown’s premise of more gun laws, less crime.
Everytown’s rankings just don’t add up. Colorado is ranked number 12 in the nation for “gun law strength,” placing it at the top of Everytown’s “Making Progress” category. But its “gun violence” rate of 16.7% is higher than all the states in the “Missing Key Laws” category except one, and was higher than 6 of the 10 states identified as having “Weak Systems,” including Texas, and higher than three of the states identified as “National Failures.”
New Mexico reflects the same trend, with the 16th highest in “gun law strength” but the fourth highest gun violence rate. On the other hand, New Hampshire was ranked 38th for “gun law strength,” but had a “gun violence rate” lower than 42 other states!
- There is no proof of causation.
Putting that aside, even if Everytown’s claim were true, it wouldn’t change matters because their research does not show that those laws caused lower rates of violent crime. They simply attempt to make the case that states with stricter gun laws happen to have less crime, and their twisted data doesn’t even make that case well.
If the research were valid, the parameters acceptable and the rankings accurate, it would still only show a correlation between gun laws and violent crime, not that one caused the other.
- This use of data clearly shows that Everytown does not care about the American people.
If Everytown actually wanted to make America safer, they would endorse policies proven to reduce violent crime; instead, they are doing backflips in order to twist statistics to promote their preferred anti-freedom agenda. This is counterproductive. Does Everytown even care about the victims of violent criminals? This fake rating of states does not help anyone.
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