U.S. States With the Strictest Gun Laws

Gun control laws and policies vary wildly by state. Many states on the east and west coasts of the United States have dozens of gun laws in the books, while many inland states only have a handful of laws to regulate firearms. Sightmark.com, which sells scopes and sights for firearms, looked at data from gun safety organization Everytown to visualize the states that have the strictest gun laws.

Click below to zoom

The graphic is made up of three main sections: a heat map of the United States displaying the number of gun laws in each state, an explanation of different types of gun control laws in the country, and a breakdown of each type of law every state has on record.

The state in the United States that has the most gun laws is California with 45 out of the 50 types of gun control laws. Some of the laws ensure that assault weapons are prohibited, secure storage of firearms is required, and guns are prohibited in K-12 schools.

The state with the fewest gun laws is Mississippi, which only has 3 of the 50 types of laws. 14 of the 50 states have fewer than 10 gun control laws established.

These are the 10 states with the most gun policies adopted along with the number of laws that are in place:

• • California: 45

• • Illinois: 42

• • New York: 42

• • Connecticut: 41

• • Hawaii: 41

• • New Jersey: 40

• • Maryland: 39

• • Massachusetts: 38

• • Washington: 33

• • Colorado: 32