Missouri and Kansas rank in bottom five for weakest gun laws nationwide, report finds

Missouri and Kansas rank in the bottom five states on gun laws in the country, according to a new report from a gun safety group.

Missouri came in 47th while Kansas ranked 45th for the strength of their gun laws in 2021. Each year the Giffords Law Center, a national gun safety nonprofit, publishes a Gun Law Scorecard that measures each state’s firearms laws against their gun death rates and gives the state a letter grade based on that metric.

For 2021, both Kansas and Missouri received an F. The states also dropped lower than their 2020 rankings — previously Kansas was 43rd and Missouri was 46th.

In 2021, Missouri suffered 642 gun deaths and Kansas had 161, according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks firearm incidents.

Missouri’s latest ranking is due in part to the passage of the Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA) in 2021, which restricts local law enforcement from enforcing certain federal gun laws, according to a news release from the Giffords Law Center.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently sued Missouri in an attempt to overturn SAPA. The department alleges that the law is unconstitutional and impairs federal criminal law enforcement efforts.

Missouri experienced a rate of 23.9 gun deaths per 100,000 people, while Kansas had a 16.9 rate in 2021, according to the scorecard.

“For more than ten years, Giffords Law Center’s Gun Law Scorecard has made it abundantly clear that states with stronger gun laws see fewer gun deaths,” the group said in the release.

California came in first for the strength of its gun laws and low gun death rate at 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 people. Arkansas came in last nationally, though its gun death rate was 22.6, below Missouri’s rate last year.