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We all know that governments in some states have great respect for the Second Amendment, while leaders in other states don’t give a second thought to passing yet another law that infringes on citizens’ right to keep and bear arms.

But do you know how your state ranks in relation to the other states in the union? Do you live in a Top 10 state, or are you stuck in one in the bottom 10?

Well, the folks at Ammo.com can help you out with that assessment. In fact, they recently posted a listing of the “Most Gun-Friendly States in 2024,” and some of the rankings might surprise you. I know they did me.

One of the surprises to me was that while most that are high on the list are in the South, Midwest or West, the Number 1 most gun-friendly state was in, of all places, the Northeast. That’s right. New Hampshire is number one.

“New Hampshire is Number 1 thanks to its incredibly relaxed gun laws, low crime rates and lack of state sales tax,” the report stated. “Governor Chris Sununu recently signed into law a bill that restricts the state’s law enforcement from enforcing federal laws that infringe on an individual’s right to gun ownership. Essentially, New Hampshire seems to be the best state for gun owners, with low crime rates and minimal restrictions on firearms and purchases.”

Number 2 on the list was West Virginia—not quite as much of a surprise to me as New Hampshire was.

“As of July 2021, most firearms and ammunition are exempt from the state’s sales tax, but not every firearm gets a pass on taxes,” the report stated. “West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice recently signed legislation that allows CHL holders to carry firearms on college campuses. Legislative actions that remove firearm restrictions are a good indicator that this state will remain on this list for some time.”

Number 3 on the list was Arkansas, which also had a lot going for it as gun ownership is concerned, according to the report.

“Arkansans are lawfully permitted to open or conceal carry firearms under the state’s concealed carry legislationas long as they’re over 18 years of age and legally allowed to possess firearms,” the report stated. “Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders currently intends to sign legislation that solidifies Arkansans’ rights to keep and bear arms. Based on her previous statements and track record, Arkansas will remain high on this list.”

Rounding out the top 10 gun-friendly states, according to the Ammo.com rankings, were Montana (4), Mississippi (5), Missouri (6), Oklahoma (7), Texas (8), South Dakota (9) and North Dakota (10).

If you don’t find your state on that list, you still have a chance to be in the top half of gun-friendly states. Rounding out the top 25 are Idaho (11), Wyoming (12), Alaska (13), South Carolina (14), Alabama (15), Kentucky (16), Tennessee (17), Florida (18), Louisiana (19), Indiana (20), Georgia (21), Iowa (22), Kansas (23), Arizona (24) and Utah (25).

As for that bottom 10—presumably the 10 Gun-Unfriendliest states—they were Hawaii (50), California (49), New York (48), Illinois (47), New Jersey (46), Connecticut (45), Maryland (44), Massachusetts (43), Rhode Island (42) and Michigan (41).

Ammo.com took into account a number of factors in determining the rankings, including current gun laws, current purchase laws, CCW guidelines, CCW reciprocity, 2A-centric taxes, current legislators’ past voting history, current governors’ voting history and stand your ground laws.

If you don’t like where your state landed on the list, take it up with the folks at Ammo.com. Or, better yet, get to work fixing your state’s 2A problems. After all, it is an election year. You can also always move, but not many of us want to do that.

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59 COMMENTS

  1. At #44 lets make lemonade,,, Md.’s wear & carry does allow for open & concealed.
    As far as open carry, meh, don’t need the attention from thugs looking to score a free gat, karens that will call in swat over a BB gun, and those LE that might not understand the law and decide the threat is too great and extinguish said imaginary threat. Too many LE around here (two is too many) believe only they should have the exclusive right/duty to carry.

    • FWIW ILL annoy has shall issue CCL.And 99% of FOID holder’s didn’t register their gats n stuff. And this list is BS. Nearby Indiana is easily top 20.It has Constitutional carry which I use a mile from ILLANNOY. Plenty of silencers & fun crap is allowed. I would watch the open carry in places like Hammond & Gary. Likely Indianapolis sucks but their demographics suck too. As far as New Hampshire it’s surrounded by leftards & weirdo’s.

  3. That’s why I moved here nearly twenty years ago. We’ve had ups and downs with varying degrees of Massification but at the moment things are good. What I don’t like is how this whole time I’ve felt like we’re walking a tight rope and could lose it all in just one election. Very stressful.

    • “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
      ― Ronald Reagan
      Are we that last generation???

      • Routinely ranked topped top 3 for economic freedom and ranks high for tax environment. The only real punishing tax is property but even that’s less than in states like CT.

        The problem with a lot of the locals is they have no perspective for their opinions. You’ll hear them bitch about the property taxes and suggest other taxes to offset them completely ignoring the states around us that have high property, income and sales taxes. They have the same attitude toward crime. It’s so low they freak out when anything happens.

        I’m afraid it’ll be a combination of this no-perspective ignorance and Masshole encroachment that eventually does the state in. Like colonizers taking advantage of a well meaning though ignorant local tribe.

          • Lots of fun little gun shops as well. Ran into Abe’s Awesome Arms looking for lunch and ended up getting several books perfect for a small lending library for my area. Loved how they called out monkey pox being a std for weirdos once they figured out I was from NY.

      • hawkeye,

        Michigan also requires registration of ALL private firearm purchases if I am not mistaken. Don’t forget red-flag law, mandatory storage requirements, mandatory reporting of stolen firearms within 24 hours (or something like that), no long-guns in vehicles (unless unloaded and in the trunk or a locked case), a mile-long list of “pistol-free zones” for concealed carry license holders, expensive concealed carry licenses and required training, and “continuing education” plus range time for concealed carry license renewal.

        I imagine there are more requirements that I am missing–I cannot keep track of all firearm laws in all of the states.

        The only advantage that Michigan has over the states with the worst ratings is that Michigan does not have a handgun roster, does not prohibit modern sporting rifles, and does not have magazine capacity limits.

      • Thanks, yes that would drag it down. It’s complicated. Like PA, open carry is legal technically without a license (except for Philly), so the would seem pretty permissive. But it’s only legal to drive with your gun stored properly AND only to certain places (to and from the range or gun smith for example; if you stop for a burger on the way technically you’re criminal). So open carry is legal, but for all practical purposes, only within walking distance from your home or business.

  5. Connecticut used to be known as the arsenal of the free world; today led by the (D) for 60+ years all of those well paying jobs have moved to the south. There are still a few corporate offices but most gun manufacturing and ammunition manufacturing has left. Colt(CZ) is here due to union contract commitments, but for how long. S&W had a molding operation, its now gone. The gun laws do nothing to address the shooting by city gangs, they happen in the large urban areas nightly. The state has banned normal capacity magazines, plebes are allowed to carry 10 rounds in a magazine. AR-15 “style” are banned, AK- “style” are banned, the (D) have lied to the gun owners 5 times and every time they restrict more, but the gangs keep banging in their own way. Open carry has been legal in CT until the (D) governor saw fit to change it. They know that gun owners don’t vote for (D) candidates, it is political payback

    • Drove down one street with a sales rep while on a business trip. One gang living on one side another on the other side. He said they pick up bodies in the street about every morning.

  7. So what do the bottom 10 have in common? Gimme a minute or two to think about it and perhaps the answer will come to me.

  8. Only 9th? I could have sworn that Hawaii was copying California (except for its extra obnoxious purchase permit rand inspection requirements)! Well, it isn’t for not trying hard enough. Although the stores are eating the new 11% excise tax for now, that can’t last. Oh, and even though it is entirely done by computer, the State AG wants to raise the cost of the instant background check for ammo purchases from $1 to $5, which it can do without any permission from the governor or the legislature. (For those unfamiliar, we can’t have ammo delivered to our doors anymore, it has to go through a dealer. So basically forget buying on the internet. Even WalMart has stopped selling ammo because they would have to have an FFL or “certified ammunition vendor” on premises at all times the store is open.)

  9. Nh ain’t gonna be #1 for long the way things are going with governor race and you are also trapped, facing fines and jail time should you cross into the communistwealth of massachusetts, pretty soon maine and vermont will be off limits too.

  10. Ohio should score a bit better than 28. The biggest ding here is probably that private “no guns” signs have the authority of trespass law behind them. Granted DeWine is talking like he wants to walk back some recent victories, but the conservative legislature will outlast him and many of the Republicans who would line up behind him are more conservative than he is. If Trump/Vance win, then there will be some jockeying to replace Vance, but there will still be some decent candidates remaining.

    • You can only be charged with trespass if you refuse to leave when asked, on private property.
      If on any government property, airport etc. different story.

  12. All states are gun friendly, its just a matter of if you get prosecuted and imprisoned for being gun friendly.

    😊

  15. One thing that “surveys” and “reviews of the law” can’t measure is . . . attitude. There are many states (or at least non-blue areas within those states) that, while they have to comply with “state law”, approach it rationally . . . they WANT you to be able to get that gun, so they jump through the hoops, but they do it with alacrity (personal experience – my youngest son lives near Denver. He took me to a range he uses (GREAT physical facility, on of the best I’ve ever seen for an indoor range), and they have a gun store, so we shopped while waiting for a lane to open up. He found something he wanted, and then . . . the bullsh*t started. They were dotting EVERY ‘i’ and crossing EVERY ‘t”, and . . . our lane opened up before they finished the paperwork, so we headed in to actually shoot. A little over a week later, we drove about 120 miles outside of Denver, to a red area of Colorado, and stopped at a LGS to buy ammunition for our (outdoor) shooting. My son saw the same gun he had been looking at (for less money, interestingly) and we had the whole transaction done within 25-30 minutes, start to finish. The difference was, the folks outside of Denver WANTED to sell us the gun, while the folk IN Denver had to go through EVERY piece of paperwork (because they knew their records would be audited by the local ATF, probably the Denver PD, the CO state thugs, etc. So they meticulously went through the steps. The folks out in the boonies sized us up, looked at my sons documents (CO CCL, certified NRA RSO, etc.) and put the NICS check, paperwork, etc. through AS FAST AS THEY COULD.

    So even in a “gun friendly” state, a LGS in a blue city might feel the need to be “extra careful”, and make the process more difficult than it needs to be. State/local/federal busies, and their attitude, impacts the process. AZ is reasonably “gun-friendly”, but . . . try to buy a handgun in Tucson (if you can even FIND a LGS).

    The laws are important, but the attitude of the local stormtroopers makes a YUGE difference, too. There are areas in OR (red, of course) where they comply with the letter of the law, but . . . they are POTG, too, so they want to get you through the process. One of the reasons I packed up and scrammed from KKKalifornia, the Leftist/fascists totally control that state, even (particularly??) the red areas.

  16. I’m not sure how Ohio comes out so low. Constitutional carry, open and concealed, stand your ground, castle doctrine, no duty to notify. No firearm IDs or special waiting periods. There are only a handful of ways it could get better. “No guns” signs have the force of law, which is a pain, but other than that, it’s pretty good.

    • Half the country is effectively constitutional carry so it may boil down to other things, with that said always envied stand your ground states especially when they block frivolous civil lawsuits.

      • SYG + civil immunity are huge. Creates (imo) low carjack/knockout game/ flash mob looting rates.

        Hmmm, that was more of a observation than an opinion, I guess…

    • As I said below, there’s something strange about the matrix they’ve used to create this ranking.

      I’d assume that in Ohio’s case this probably has a lot to do with transport laws, which if they’re the same as they were when I was there, are downright odd.

      Realistically, this is a very difficult ranking to try to do when you think about it.

      For example: If State X has PITA transport laws but is nicer about handing out CCWs than State Y, but State Y is which is more strict with the CCWs but much easier on transport… which one is more “gun friendly”?

      And then we have to ask how much of this is media? While it’s true that, for example, the current governor of NM is extremely anti-gun, the actual laws on the books in NM are demonstrably more friendly than TX in many regards. Realistically, the laws in NM are unlikely to change due to the nature of NM’s governmental structure whereas TX is more likely to change.

      But TX has gun-friendlier pols, which NM does not. So, which state is actually friendlier to gun owners? IRL, it kinda depends on what guns you own and what you do with them so one person’s awesome state might be someone else’s shithole and vice versa.

      • No, transport laws have improved greatly. They’re pretty much what you’d find in any gun-friendly state now.

        • Then I would hazard the guess that it’s the GFZ signage that the state allows.

          Again, difficult to rank this stuff. A lot will depend on how you weight things and what specifics the rankers themselves know about the rules and how they’re actually enforced IRL.

          I mean, we have a “mag ban” which sounds terrible except that it’s a total fucking joke. No one obeys it, gun stores basically everywhere openly flout it and like three people have been charged under it in over a decade. In all three cases it was a sweetener for someone who already did something like rob a bank and then have a gunfight with the cops.

          So, how exactly does one rank a “mag ban” law that is enforced about 0.000000000000000000000001% of the time and which any uniformed LEO will straight up tell you doesn’t matter and actually advise that you break rather than follow?

      • Obviously you’re in New Mexico! LMFAO! For you to say NM is a more gun friendly state ,with better firearms laws than Texas ,only makes you look like a fool.

      • Plus,. NM is a very blue state,… Red Flag Laws, no Constitutional Carry, waiting period for firearm purchase, etc,etc. … sounds like a real gun owners paradise don’t it?

    • Tec’s Dad,

      Pro-tip:

      Imagine a few words that the Democrat Politburo would absolutely NOT want you to type in a comment. When you want to type those words, type them with alternate characters where readers can still understand the word and yet the underlying software (which a metric crap-ton of sites use) will fail to see that word as something that should trigger deleting your comment.

      Here is an example: I use the characters for Pr0gre$$ive to refer to that label that starts with a “P” and refers to Far Left Democrats. If I typed all the correct letters (an “o” instead of a zero and “s” instead of a dollar sign) the underlying software would detect that and delete my comment.

  18. This Rating is complete bullshit if you see states like utah on place 25 where you can carry anywhere with ccw at 21 ore montana at 18 (exept k12)

    Use gunsandammo for an better rating

    https://www.gunsandammo.com/editorial/best-states-for-gun-owners-2023/488509

    Not perfect if you would score states with low “no gun zones” on top (texas for example with a lot of felony traps for an extrem overrated state that must downgrawed) you must downgrad a lot of states as arkanses and Mississippi (with enhanced ccw for residents only infrigment) too.

    Florida without open carry another overrated state.

    • That may have factored in NH’s favor. Other than courts, airport past the TSA check, prisons, and similar secured areas, you can carry pretty much anywhere. Bars, airport terminal outside TSA checkpoints, churches, hospitals, parks, statehouse, etc.

  19. The fact that TX beats NM by the margin that it does tells you that there’s something funky with the matrix they’ve created to make this ranking.

    • Texas should had been top three for sure, actually first! NM is a disgrace. ,..waiting period for firearm purchases, RED FLAG LAWS, NO CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY, ETC,ETC,ETC, and that crazy ass Governor you have. A real gun owners paradise ain’t it? Lmfao! I’m shocked NM didn’t rate a lot higher than 36! NM is a disgrace.

  20. Yea, this one’s all f’d up. Any state with red flag laws does not belong above any state without them. Florida’s anti-open-carry law should keep it out of the top 30.

  21. I don’t believe for a second that Texas should be ranked 8th. What exact criteria is used to determine the rankings? Texas should easily be ranked in the top three. I actually think it should rank 1st in the country.

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