How strictly are guns regulated where you live?

In the United States, firearm-related injuries, including suicides, homicides and accidental shootings, killed 38,700 people in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up from 33,600 in 2014. Despite the rising death toll, laws regulating firearms are an inconsistent patchwork, with little federal oversight.

Many of the laws regulating access to firearms have been passed at the state level, with few federal regulations that apply to the whole country. Most often these state laws are intended to prevent certain individuals from obtaining guns or limit access to particular types of weapons, such as assault rifles.

Of the seven types of regulations we looked at, no single restriction has been enacted in all 50 states.

We looked at seven types of gun control enacted at the state level: red flag laws, relinquishment laws, assault weapons bans, high-capacity magazine bans, gun possession prohibitions for high-risk individuals, gun possession prohibitions for individuals with domestic violence convictions and mandatory background checks.

Two states had none of these forms of gun control while two had all seven.

What are assault weapons and high-capacity magazines?

High-capacity or large-capacity magazines are defined as magazines that hold a large amount of ammunition, allowing the gun to be fired many times without pausing to reload. (A magazine is the chamber that stores ammunition and feeds it into the firearm.)

The definition of a military-style assault weapon can vary by state, but in general it means any semiautomatic weapon that includes features or attachments “that appear useful in military and criminal applications but unnecessary in shooting sports or self-defense,” according to an assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.

In all but six states and the District of Columbia, it’s legal to sell, transfer and possess military-style semiautomatic assault weapons, including assault rifles and pistols. In all but seven states and the District, it’s also legal to purchase high-capacity magazines.

Among other forms of gun control, the most widely enacted are restrictions on possession of a firearm by high-risk individuals, including individuals with criminal records or mental health or substance abuse issues.

What types of legislation exists in states?

“Background checks are making the biggest impacts” on reducing gun fatalities, according to Bindu Kalesan, director of Boston University’s Center for Clinical Translational Epidemiology and Comparative Effectiveness Research, who wrote a 2016 study on the effectiveness of gun policy measures.

However, even among states with thorough background check laws, reciprocity agreements between states undercut the ability of individual states to manage the flow of firearms into their borders. “[Without] comprehensive guns laws we’re not going to be able to start making progress,” Kalesan said.

Where each state stands on gun control legislation