When a political organization starts issuing grades, it's important to understand what those grades actually mean. The NRA grades candidates for office based on how pro-gun they are, for example.
But Giffords grades states, and there's a fatal flaw in those grades that the media and anti-gun politicians overlook.
See, these grades are touted by some as something to be proud of, that it shows their state is nice and safe, while those icky states with an "F" are terrible and dangerous.
However, as the NSSF's Larry Keane points out, Giffords grades ain't about results.
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.
And to be sure, they know it. They know it, and they don't care.
See, they pretend they care about these suicides involving a firearm, but they never seem to look beyond the gun. Suicide is a mental health issue. It's something that happens when someone thinks there's no way out from whatever it is that's bothering them--and "bothering" is really too mild a word to describe the inner turmoil they're experiencing--and thinks that ending it all is the only way out.
It's not. It never is.
But it's that thinking that needs to be addressed, not the tool many use to accomplish that sad goal. Giffords, however, doesn't care. They want to use those suicides to advance their agenda, so they lump them in so "gun deaths" will sound worse, especially since most people will assume most are homicides, and they tie those to their grades that are purely based on what policies are in place rather than anything else.
They're not trying to make America safer. They're trying to make us disarmed. That's it. That's the totality of what they're trying to accomplish, and these grades are manipulated in such a way to try to make that happen.
And despite them claiming to be about gun violence prevention, they never seem to include any policies that might reduce so-called gun violence without enacting gun control.
Of course, none of us are shocked by this, but it's telling about how much of a lie their entire self-description really is. It's not about safety or preventing violence. It's about making it so people like you and me are unable to have the best tools for self-defense, all because some people are terrible people and misuse those tools.
Never mind that they'll still do horrible things, no matter what tools are available to them.
I mean, didn't Bondi Beach settle that discussion once and for all?
