New Jersey ranked near the bottom of a ranking of violent deaths from guns in a report released this week by a group committed to tougher gun control.
The Violence Policy Center concluded that states with high gun ownership and weak gun laws have the highest rates of gun deaths.
New Jersey, which at 11 percent of households has the nation’s third-lowest gun ownership rate, ranked 45th in the rate of gun deaths. There were 5.68 gun deaths per 100,000 people in New Jersey in 2006, the center said.
Louisiana, where 46 percent of households have guns, had the highest gun death rate of 19.58. Following it were Alabama (57 percent ownership, 16.99 deaths) and Alaska (61 percent ownership, 16.38 deaths).
Hawaii ranked lowest, with guns in 10 percent of households and a death rate of 2.58 per 100,000 people, followed by Massachusetts (13 percent ownership, 3.28 deaths) and Rhode Island (13 percent ownership, 4.43 deaths).
Death rates came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Control and Prevention. The gun ownership rates came from a 2005 report published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which relied on a 2002 survey by the CDC of 240,735 adults nationwide.