Louisiana ranks fifth in the nation for having the weakest gun laws

By Mason Harrison
Contributing Writer
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Eighteen months after a gunman shocked America by killing more than two dozen students and teachers at an elementary school in rural Connecticut, gun violence continues to permeate national news coverage on a regular basis, with a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listing Louisiana as ground zero for the country’s gun violence epidemic.

In Louisiana, more than 45 percent of residents report having a gun in their homes, compared to just over 13 percent of residents in Rhode Island. Some experts paint a connection between the availability of guns in the Pelican State with what for decades has been a stubbornly high murder rate. Nationwide, America boasts just north of 10 fast cash commando gun deaths per 100,000 residents, a figure that nearly doubles to more than 18 deaths per 100,000 when examined exclusively in Louisiana. Conversely, Rhode Island yields the nation’s lowest gun murder rate at just over 3 deaths per 100,000.

“Despite our clear problem with gun-related fatalities in Louisiana, we rank fifth for weakest gun laws in the country,” according to a statement citing data from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence from the liberal advocacy group Louisiana Progress. “Being fifth in the nation for weakest gun laws is not a badge of honor for our state. It’s disgraceful. And it’s time our legislators really buckle down and take sweeping action to ensure that public bad credit rv loans california safety is of the highest priority.”

In the wake of the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., more than 100 gun laws were passed by state legislatures amid a renewed national debate over gun control and whether Congress should enact mandatory background checks for all would-be gun owners in America. A number of states tightened their gun laws, but the majority, including Louisiana, loosened restrictions. In Louisiana, lawmakers have made it easier for carriers of concealed weapons permits to remain anonymous, now permit sheriff’s offices to issue permits for concealed weapons, and created a mechanism for the issuance of lifetime concealed weapons permits.

The lone post-Newtown restriction on gun access enacted by the Legislature goes into effect cash advance Charlotte NC Toddville Road later this summer and bars domestic gun buyers who are under an order of legal protection from owning a gun in the state for a period of 10 years, an effort that was part of a larger package of new laws geared toward reducing domestic violence and that was unopposed by gun advocates.

But, largely, Louisiana remains a state both politically and culturally supportive of gun ownership, with voters making national headlines in 2012 after approving an amendment to the state Consti­tution by a wide margin that makes gun ownership a fundamental right for Louisiana residents.

Yet the state’s political climate has not deterred gun control advocates from needling lawmakers over the state’s dubious ranking cash advance stores open on sunday as the most violent in the country, with New Orleans, its largest municipality, consistently making the top of national listings of the country’s most violent urban centers.

“Louisiana,” according to the statement from Louisiana Progress, “currently has no laws regulating firearm sales by persons who are not licensed by the federal government, no categories of persons deemed ineligible to purchase or possess firearms, no laws governing regulating gun dealers, and no laws restricting the number of firearms that may be sold to an individual within a given time frame, among many other areas where lack of legislative oversight exists.”

The Brady Campaign, along with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, graded each state as blue chip funds part of its 2013 State Scorecard on effective gun laws and ranked Louisiana among the worst states. The state’s F grade is based on the assessment of “30 policy approaches to regulating guns and ammunition, such as background checks on gun sales, reporting lost or stolen firearms, and prohibiting dangerous people from purchasing weapons,” according to the joint report.

“Seven states with the highest grades also have the lowest gun deaths nationwide,” the report contends. “Conversely, many states with the weakest gun laws have the highest gun death rates.” Calif­ornia, Connecticut, New York and Illinois are among the states with the toughest gun laws in the United States, but opponents of stricter gun laws will personal loan felda quickly point to states like Illinois where, thanks to Chicago, there exists outsized murder rates well above the national average.

Still, groups like the Brady Campaign argue more research is needed to support its findings and that regardless of outliers like Illinois, more state-level intervention is needed to prevent gun violence. “State laws,” according to the report, “fill some of the most critical gaps in federal law [including] [one] of the most dangerous gaps that exists because federal [law] only requires background checks for sales by a licensed gun dealer…[because] of this, roughly 40 percent of all gun purchases do not require background checks, allowing dangerous people to skirt the law.”

This article originally published in the June 23, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.