Violence Policy Center: Gun related deaths on the rise

States with weak gun-control laws and higher rates of gun ownership tend to have higher rates of gun deaths, while states with stronger policies and fewer gun owners have significantly lower rates of gun-related deaths, according to a recent Violence Policy Center study.
Analyzing 2011 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the report found that the state with the highest gun death rate, which includes murder, accidental shooting deaths and suicides, was Louisiana, where 18.91 per 100,000 residents died by gun violence and nearly 46 percent of households owned guns, reported The Huffington Post.
Mississippi, Alaska, Wyoming and Montana had the next highest rates of gun deaths, while Rhode Island ranked as the state with the lowest rate of deaths by firearms at 3.14 per 100,000, followed by Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey.
Nationwide, guns killed 32,351 people in 2011 -- a 679-person increase from the previous year -- for an average gun death rate of 10.38.
On both a statewide and federal level, America’s firearm-related death rate significantly outnumbered most other Western industrialized countries. The 2011 gun death rate in Australia was 0.86 per 100,000 and in the United Kingdom it was 0.23 per 100,000.
To read more Click Here