Murders by Firearm Infographic

Gun control is one of the defining issues of the Democratic and Republican parties. It's well documented that Democrats would prefer stricter gun laws than their Republican counterparts. Given this information, we wanted to see if some states are statistically safer than others based on partisanship.  

First we took a look at the national murder rate per 100,000 residents* and broke it up into murder rates per state.** States to the left of the 0 axis are below the national average with Hawaii having the lowest murder rate in the nation. States to the right of the 0 axis have murder rates above the national average. Then we divided states up by the level of voting support for either Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama (Blue) or Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney (Red) indicating how Republican or Democratic each state is. 

Here are the findings. (Click on the graphic to view a larger image of it.)

*The national murder rate was 2.75 murders per 100,000 residents in 2011 according to The Guardian.
**Alabama and Florida did not have data on murders by firearms.