Opinion
By Larry Keane
For 15 years, the annual Giffords “Gun Law Scorecard” has been promoted as a definitive ranking of states doing the most to keep their citizens safe from criminal misuse of firearms. Legislators cite these scores during hearings; activists use them as “proof” of policy successes, and media outlets repeat the grades ad nauseam without a second thought.
For example, while Giffords gives New York an A, it didn’t stop a number of high-profile criminal attacks this year including United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Jets cornerback Kris Boyd, 7 people from being shot on Thanksgiving eve or at a Sweet 16 Party just this week in New York City.
But these scorecards are not a measure of crime trends, public safety outcomes or even the effectiveness of firearm regulations. It is a grading system built to reward gun control compliance and shame states that defend lawful firearm ownership.
Rewarding Restrictions, Not Results
The defining flaw in the Giffords scorecard is the way it is constructed. Rather than beginning with criminal justice statistics or evaluating whether specific laws have reduced violent crime, the scorecard starts with a predetermined list of preferred policies. States are awarded points for passing gun and magazine bans, waiting periods, storage mandates, permit-to-purchase schemes and other restrictions on the law-abiding. Whether those measures work or deter crime is irrelevant. Giffords’ grading system doesn’t account for real-world results.
This is not a practical or useful analysis of safety; it is a policy report card explicitly designed to produce a desired narrative. When A’s and F’s are predetermined by the presence or absence of specific legislation, the scorecard becomes a messaging tool rather than an assessment of outcomes.
To give the scorecard a veneer of scientific credibility, Giffords’ own methodology states the scorecard is based on state gun laws and then compared to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gun death data — choosing to include data that suits their agenda rather than a clear picture of the truth. They intentionally include suicides, accidents, lawful interventions and undetermined causes — categories that are not measures of criminal activity and often have little connection to firearm policy. In 2023, nearly 6 in every 10 gun deaths in the United States was by suicide — comprising more than 58 percent of all firearm-related deaths nationwide and disproportionately affect rural, older and more isolated populations, regardless of a state’s gun laws.
If Giffords wanted to provide an accurate scorecard, they’d use the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer or Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), which tracks actual criminal misuse of firearms. FBI data shows firearm homicides, robberies, aggravated assaults and broader violent crime trends. These are the numbers that tell policymakers whether criminals are being stopped, whether violent offenders are being prosecuted and whether communities are experiencing reductions in criminal misuse of firearm cases.
Additionally, the FBI’s UCR program tracks justifiable homicides as well and data collected from 2015–2024 that shows a trend Giffords is ignoring. During that time, there were 2,776 justified homicides involving private citizens compared to 1,936 involving police officers. In the case of civilian justified homicides, firearms were used in 88.5 percent of incidents, and the rate of “no known relationship” (i.e. strangers, or would-be assailants) to the deceased increased from 44.7 percent to 55.5 percent.
Of course, if Giffords were to use the FBI’s crime data accurately, it would destroy the narrative that pro-gun control states are inherently safer. The data simply does not align with the story the scorecard is designed to tell.
Narrative Falls Apart
Examining FBI homicide and violent crime statistics reveals a more complicated picture than the one presented by Giffords. States with the highest gun control grades, including California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, continue to experience significant firearm-related crime, driven largely by concentrated urban violence. Meanwhile, many states that receive failing grades from Giffords, such as Wyoming, Montana, Arkansas and Missouri, see high levels of lawful ownership but do not uniformly experience elevated firearm homicide rates outside specific socioeconomic hotspots.
In reality, crime follows patterns tied to gang activity, narcotics trafficking, law enforcement capacity and yes, poverty. It does not follow Giffords’ A-to-F scale. The relationship between state gun laws and criminal violence is far more influenced by local conditions than by whether lawmakers have checked enough boxes on an advocacy group’s policy list.
Another dataset the scorecard refuses to acknowledge is the adjusted FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) numbers. When permit renewals and administrative checks are removed, NICS provides a clear look at lawful gun purchases. States with strict gun laws — those Giffords rates most highly — tend to have very low per-capita gun purchases. States that protect the Second Amendment and receive low grades have far higher rates of lawful firearm ownership.
If lawful gun ownership were the driving factor in firearm crime, these states would be experiencing staggering levels of violence. They are not. The relationship between lawful firearm ownership and firearm homicide is complex and heavily influenced by local conditions. Some studies find a statistical association between higher ownership and firearm homicide rates, but that doesn’t tell us which way causation runs, and it doesn’t mean lawful commerce is the driver of criminal misuse.
The disconnect exposes a critical fact: legal firearm commerce is not the source of America’s crime problem. Criminal misuse is. Giffords’ refusal to acknowledge lawful ownership rates is a deliberate choice, since they know doing so would weaken the argument that restricting responsible citizens leads to safer communities.
Scorecard as a Political Tool
The real objective of the Giffords scorecard persuasion, not clear analysis. The organization has crafted a grading system that produces headlines, shapes legislative hearings and pressures state lawmakers to adopt policies that align with its advocacy agenda. By branding states that defend gun rights as failures, the scorecard attempts to manufacture public support for laws that have shown little measurable impact on crime.
America deserves better than advocacy scorecards posing as research. Real progress requires confronting the true drivers of crime. That means holding violent offenders accountable, supporting law enforcement, strengthening reporting to the background check system, disrupting trafficking networks and investing in mental health resources that address the suicide crisis directly and is too often at the root of high-profile tragedies.
These are the strategies that work and don’t require punishing millions of responsible gun owners to be effective. They simply require an acknowledgement that crime is a challenge to overcome, not a legislative contest to win.
At its core, the Giffords scorecard is a branding exercise designed to promote gun control, not a serious evaluation of public safety.
Lawmakers and the public deserve policies rooted in fact, not letter grades crafted to push a political agenda. Real safety comes from Real Solutions®, not from a scoring system designed to conflate advocacy with evidence. Unfortunately for Giffords, once their scorecards are held up to the truth, the result is a failing grade.
About The National Shooting Sports Foundation
NSSF is the trade association for the firearm industry. Its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and shooting sports. Formed in 1961, NSSF has a membership of thousands of manufacturers, distributors, firearm retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen’s organizations, and publishers nationwide. For more information, visit nssf.org
LOL, from the article: When A’s and F’s are predetermined by the presence or absence of specific legislation, the scorecard becomes a messaging tool rather than an assessment of outcomes. In OreGONEistan, giving a grade is racist because it was all “designed by the white man to put the black man down” so everything is pass or fail. In order to fail you have to not be there, in order to pass, all you need to do is warm the seat. In order to excel, you need to “listen, learn and comply” says my great niece that teaches in Springfield… Read more »
Dems can’t progress if they can’t Iie.
Mark Kelly and Gabby Gifford are so embarrassed by their failure to provide proper security at the book signing where a deranged and mentally ill person shot the place up causing several deaths and her disabilities they decided to start a “gun control” organization, like there weren’t enough already. Because their gun control organization is a failure, they create fake statistics which they peddle as the truth.
In this we see some subtle and not so subtle differences between classical progressive and New Left Progressive ideologies at work in public policy. Classical progressives are stone cold authoritarians. They see no need to convince the serf class. Coercion is their preferred tool because they concentrate all power, resources and access to control in the state and the serf class, the 95%, meaning you and me have no say in the matter. The Progressive New Left is a bit different. They try to convince people to willfully surrender their natural rights to the elite and do so peacefully. Sheep… Read more »
It is only natural for Giffords and the like to develop their own (unoriginal) version of the NRA-ILA scorecard for candidates for office. As the author points out in different words, causation does not equal correlation. As an example of this fallacy, I offer this: “Reading comprehension is correlated positively with body weight — the more someone weighs, the better they are at reading.” This is a fallacy because a 2nd grader typically doesn’t weigh as much as a high school junior, and we can take that the heavier-weight high school junior will have better reading comprehension. The better comprehension… Read more »
These far leftist gun banning groups are run and funded by George Soros, Micheal Bloomberg, the Chinese government, the Russian government, the North Korea government. These gun banning groups get millions in ” dark money” from unknown sources to fund their activities. China has gone before the UN council and demanded that the 2nd Amendment be repealed. China makes a claim that owning guns is a human rights violation. Huh?? In China, it is forbidden for its citizens to own guns. Only the police, military and politicians can own guns. How else can they control a population of over 1.3… Read more »
Democrats are not the only scammers: Common Holiday Scams Non-Delivery Scams: You pay for items online, but they never arrive. Phony Charity Appeals: Funds are redirected to scammers. Gift Card Fraud: Scammers ask you to pay with prepaid cards and steal the funds. Auction Fraud: Items are misrepresented on auction sites. Holiday Travel Scams: Fake vacation rentals, discounted airfare offers, or fraudulent travel deals designed to steal your money or personal information. How To Protect Yourself If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Shop only on secure websites (look for “https://” and a padlock icon). Avoid clicking suspicious links in… Read more »
Next time some liberal authority suspects your integrity, politely refer these liberals to your long scholarship in the new “super-extended” background check. And that’ll do it!
How do we sue giffords into oblivion?
Intentionally misleading people should be punishable by death.
Start with every libtard Democrat in Government.
Then the media.
I vote for immediate hanging. Why waste a bullet.
When is Giffords going to be sued out of existence?