LA Voice: “Yet, with all the mass killings elsewhere, Louisiana has the SECOND-HIGHEST gun death rate in the US, according to a story in the Louisiana Illuminator, the only publication I’ve seen that published the grim statistics.
Let that sink in. We’re killing each other at an alarming rate, in random acts of one-on-one slaughter. Enough that our murder rate of 26.3 per 100,000 population ranks only behind that of Mississippi’s 28.6 per 100,000.
That’s Mississippi, the state that also boasts the highest infant mortality rate, the nation’s highest poverty rate, the nation’s worst nutrition, that ranks AMONG THE WORST in the nation in pre-natal care and where the governor recently declared June 2022 as “SANCTITY OF LIFE MONTH.”
But let’s get back to Louisiana and that Illuminator story, written by Wes Muller.
Muller correctly points out that while some states have attempted to enact stricter gun control laws, Louisiana’s moribund legislators have seen fit to do little other than approve a resolution to study the pros and cons of arming school employees (the biggest and overriding con that I can come up with is children being caught in the crossfire of a Dodge City shootout between a panicky teacher and a deranged killer who doesn’t give a damn about his own life.)
And I won’t even get into a discussion about the macho hillbilly Green Beret wannabe who wrote in to assure me that he would have my back in such a scenario.
In order, the top five (or should that be the bottom five) in gun-related death rates are: Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming, Missouri, and Alabama.
There you have it. Five states with the most lax gun laws in America and three are from the Deep South where they things like “You kin have mah gun when you pry it from mah cold, dead hands,” and “Praise John Wayne and pass the ammo.””