December 18, 2025

Giffords State Scorecards Wilts Under Data’s Light

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.

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