The data come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks firearms deaths, and a project at the Boston University School of Public Health, which tracks dozens of different provisions of gun laws in the 50 states.



Other research has also found a clear connection between stricter state gun laws and a lower rate of firearms-related deaths.

In 2013, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that states with more gun laws had fewer gun-related deaths. The impact was seen for overall deaths, as well as for specific categories such as homicides and suicides.



But while the researchers confirmed that states with tougher gun laws have lower gun-related death rates, the study did not explain whether gun laws were the reason for the difference.



"As our study could not determine cause-and-effect relationships, further studies are necessary to define the nature of this association," they wrote.



While the cause and effect may seem intuitively obvious, there are apparently other factors behind the difference in gun-related deaths from one state to another.



In Maine, for example, where there are relatively few gun laws on the books, there were a little more than 8.3 gun-related deaths per 100,000. But Louisiana, with roughly the same number of gun laws, saw a firearms death rate of 21.3 in 2016.