State economies most dependent on the gun industry

Regardless of your personal opinion on the gun industry, you can’t deny the impact it has on the United States. The right to bear arms is the second amendment in our Bill of Rights, a prominent position that signals the importance of firearms to the Founding Fathers. Forty-two percent of Americans live in a household with a gun, while a whopping 72 percent of Americans say they have shot a gun before. The United States has a higher number of guns per 100 residents than any other country in the world.

The firearm industry also has an immense economic impact on the country: Sales of firearms and ammunition contributed more than $51 billion to the United States economy in 2018. To discover how the industry affects each state’s economy, WalletHub ranked all 50 states on three separate dimensions: the firearms industry, gun prevalence and gun politics. To calculate the score for each category, WalletHub studied 16 key metrics, including firearms industry jobs per 10,000 residents, strictness of state gun laws and gun sales per 1,000 residents. Read on to see how much your state’s economy depends on the firearm industry, find out which state has the highest prevalence of guns and learn which state’s politics are friendliest to gun owners and firearm companies.

To see which states are the most (and least) dependent on funding from the federal government, click here.