The tragic result of years of refusal by state legislators (especially those in Republican-led states) to implement commonsense measures to prevent gun violence is clear. Today, nine of the 10 states with the highest gun fatality rates are deeply red—like Mississippi, which ranks number one in the nation for the highest rate of gun deaths, with 29.7 per 100,000 Mississippians killed by gunshot last year.
Conversely, of the states that have the lowest gun death rates, nine of the 10 states are blue. Rhode Islanders, for example, are 10 times less likely to be shot and killed than Mississippians.