A Civil Beat Investigation: In Hawaii’s workers’ comp system, people with long-lasting injuries are often forced to battle doctors hand-picked by insurance companies to get treatment and disability payments.
Hawaii had the lowest gun-death rate in 2014 — the most recent year for available data — when looking at household gun-ownership rates. Rhode Island was not far behind.
The state with the highest gun-death rate was Alaska followed by Louisiana.
According to a press release Monday from the Violence Policy Center, “states with the lowest overall gun death rates have lower rates of gun ownership and some of the strongest gun violence prevention laws in the nation. However, even in these states the human toll of gun violence is far above the gun death rate in other industrialized nations.”
The total number of Americans killed by gunfire, says the group, dropped to 33,599 in 2014 from 33,636 in 2013.
“America’s gun death rates — both nationwide and in the states — dwarf those of other industrialized nations,” says VCP.
Hawaii earned top honors as the state with the lowest gun-death rate last year, too, while Alaska also had the highest gun-death rate, based on 2012 data. At the time, the VCP reached the same conclusion about gun-ownership laws and gun violence.
The new study comes as President Obama is expected to announce an executive order regarding gun control.
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Chad Blair is the Politics and Opinion Editor for Civil Beat. You can reach him by email at cblair@civilbeat.org or follow him on Twitter at @chadblairCB.
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