Freedom Doesn't Kill You
New Hampshire has constitutional carry. No required gun license. No red flag law. No magazine limits. No weapons bans. No adult seatbelt law. No motorcycle helmet law. No vehicle inspections. An F from the Giffords Law Center on gun control.
California has every gun law the activists have ever asked for. Illinois has some of the strictest firearms regulations in the country. Maryland requires permits, mandates storage, limits magazines, and has a red flag law. All three get A or A- grades from Giffords.
So who's safer?
WalletHub / World Population Review, 2024
FBI Uniform Crime Report, 2024
FBI UCR 2023, Baltimore PD
The Scoreboard
Here is every state that lectures America about gun safety, lined up next to the state that ignores them.
| State | Giffords Grade | Violent Crime | Murder Rate | Gun Death Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Hampshire | F | 110 | 1.85 | 9.6 |
| New Jersey | A | 218 | 2.84 | 4.6 |
| New York | A | 380 | 3.04 | 4.7 |
| California | A | 486 | 4.95 | 8.0 |
| Illinois | A- | 289 | 6.56 | 13.5 |
| Maryland | A- | 420 | 8.33 | 12.3 |
Sources: Giffords 2025 Scorecard, FBI UCR 2024, KFF/CDC
Read the Illinois line. A- grade. Every gun law the activists want. And a gun death rate of 13.5 per 100,000. That is 41% higher than New Hampshire's 9.6. Maryland gets the same A- grade and posts a 12.3. Twenty-eight percent higher than the state with no gun laws at all.
California's violent crime rate is 4.4 times New Hampshire's. Four and a half times more violent crime in a state with an A on gun control, universal background checks, a ten-day waiting period, mandatory registration, safe storage laws, and a ban on any firearm the state decides looks scary.
New Hampshire has none of that. And fewer people get hurt.
The Cities That Prove It
If strict gun laws made people safe, the cities with the strictest laws would be the safest cities. They're not. They're the most dangerous places in America.
Baltimore Police Department, 2023
Chicago PD, FBI UCR 2023
FBI UCR 2023, LAPD
Chicago has had a handgun ban, a carry ban, magazine limits, and some of the most aggressive gun enforcement in the country for decades. Six hundred and seventeen people were murdered there in 2023. New Hampshire, where any adult can carry a loaded weapon without telling anyone, had 26.
The gun control lobby's response to this data is always the same: neighboring states with loose laws are the problem. Guns flow in from Indiana. From Virginia. From New Hampshire.
Okay. Then why isn't New Hampshire drowning in gun crime? If the problem is loose gun laws, New Hampshire should be the worst state in the country. It has the loosest laws. Instead, it has the lowest gun homicide rate in the nation at roughly 1.1 per 100,000. Eighty percent below the national average.
“The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.”New Hampshire Constitution, Article 10
Beyond Guns
The pattern holds for every category. Not just guns. Not just crime. Everything.
| Metric | NH | CA | IL | NY | MD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime (per 100K) | 110 | 486 | 289 | 380 | 420 |
| Murder rate (per 100K) | 1.85 | 4.95 | 6.56 | 3.04 | 8.33 |
| Property crime (per 100K) | 889 | 2,326 | 1,720 | 1,799 | 2,071 |
| Poverty rate | 7.2% | 11.8% | 11.6% | 14.0% | 9.1% |
| Incarceration (per 100K) | 149 | 250 | 236 | 159 | 252 |
| Cato Freedom rank | #1 | #48 | #41 | #50 | #44 |
| Giffords gun grade | F | A | A- | A | A- |
Sources: FBI UCR 2023-2024, Census ACS 2023, Sentencing Project 2022, Cato/Mercatus 2023, Giffords 2025
California's property crime rate is 2.6 times New Hampshire's. Shoplifting. Car theft. Burglary. All the crimes that Proposition 47 was supposed to reduce by decriminalizing them. New York's poverty rate is double NH's. Maryland locks up people at nearly twice NH's rate and still can't keep Baltimore safe.
New Hampshire doesn't regulate its way to good outcomes. It earns them with low taxes, strong communities, good schools, low poverty, and a government that stays out of the way.
What the F Actually Means
The Giffords grading system does not measure safety. It measures the number of laws on the books. Pass a red flag law, get points. Ban a category of firearms, get points. Require a permit, get points. Whether any of it reduces crime is irrelevant to the grade.
By their scoring, Illinois deserves an A-. Never mind that Chicago had 617 murders. Maryland deserves an A-. Never mind that Baltimore's murder rate is 25 times New Hampshire's. The laws exist. They got the grade. People are still dying.
New Hampshire's F means one thing: the state trusts its citizens. It doesn't require a permission slip to exercise a constitutional right. It doesn't ban firearms based on cosmetic features. It doesn't force you to store your property the way the government prefers.
And the result? The lowest gun homicide rate in America. Approximately 1.1 per 100,000. In a state where anyone over 18 can carry a loaded concealed weapon without asking permission.
The Full Regulation List
Here is what New Hampshire does not have. Every item on this list exists in California, Illinois, New York, and Maryland.
Every single one of those missing regulations was supposed to be necessary for public safety. Every one of them exists in the states with the worst crime in the country. None of them exist in the safest state in the country.
The Honest Part
Two things deserve context.
First, gun suicides. NH's total gun death rate of 9.6 per 100,000 is higher than New York's 4.7 and California's 8.0. But 88% of New Hampshire's gun deaths are suicides. Not homicides. Rural states with high gun ownership consistently have higher gun suicide rates. That's a mental health problem, and it's real. But when you isolate gun homicides, the state with a F has the lowest rate in the nation.
Second, the opioid crisis. New Hampshire got hit hard in 2017. The overdose rate has stabilized at about 18.7 per 100,000, above the national average of 16. That's a genuine problem that hasn't been solved yet. But it has nothing to do with gun laws or seatbelt mandates, and the states that preach regulation the loudest haven't solved it either.
Why It Works
Safety doesn't come from laws. It comes from communities. Strong schools. Low poverty. High social trust. Jobs that pay well in a state that doesn't tax the income. Neighbors who know each other. Towns where people show up to vote at town meeting and serve on the school board.
California has a $16 minimum wage, mandatory paid leave, a 13.3% income tax, and every regulation the progressive movement has ever dreamed up. It also has tent cities, a property crime epidemic, and a violent crime rate four times New Hampshire's.
New Hampshire has a $7.25 minimum wage, no income tax, no sales tax, and a government that mostly leaves people alone. It also has the lowest poverty rate in America, the 3rd highest median income, and the lowest violent crime rate in the region.
The theory behind the regulatory state is that people cannot be trusted with freedom. That without the government telling them what to do, what to own, how to drive, and how to store their property, bad things will happen.
New Hampshire is the proof that the theory is wrong. The freest state is the safest state. The states with the most laws are the most dangerous. And 1.4 million people living under a constitution that calls resistance to tyranny a right, not a crime, are doing just fine.
Freedom doesn't kill you. The data says it might save your life.
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