TUESDAY, March 12 (HealthDay News) -- States with more firearm laws have a lower rate of gun deaths overall and by suicide and homicide, according to a study published online March 6 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Eric W. Fleegler, M.D., M.P.H., from Boston Children's Hospital, and colleagues examined the association between the 121,084 firearm fatalities from 2007 through 2010 reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the number of firearm laws in a state, as represented by a "legislative strength score" across five categories of laws.
The researchers found that firearm fatality rates per 100,000 individuals per year varied, from 2.9 in Hawaii to 17.9 in Louisiana. Legislative strength scores (out of 28 possible points) ranged from zero in Utah to 24 in Massachusetts. Compared with states with legislative strength scores of two or less, states with scores of nine or greater had a lower overall firearm fatality rate (absolute rate difference, 6.64 deaths per 100,000 per year; age-adjusted incident rate ratio, 0.58). Compared with the bottom quarter of states with the fewest laws, the top quarter of states with the most laws had a lower rate of firearm suicides (absolute rate difference, 6.25 deaths per 100,000 per year; incident rate ratio, 0.63) and homicides (absolute rate difference, 0.40 deaths per 100,000 per year; incident rate ratio, 0.60).
"A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually," Fleegler and colleagues conclude. "As our study could not determine cause-and-effect relationships, further studies are necessary to define the nature of this association."
Abstract
Full Text
Editorial