Several readers have sent me this one. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Ownership has come out with their annual rankings. Maryland got the highest ranking with an A-, while states like Idaho, Montana, and Vermont got failing grades. So, Maryland must be doing a much better job to prevent gun violence, right? Well, not exactly.

You see, the Brady Campaign doesn't actually look at gun violence when determining their rankings. Instead they look at gun ownership and how easy it is for law abiding citizens to obtain and possess a firearm. In fact the states the have passing Brady grades have some of the highest rates of gun violence in the country, while the failing states have the lowest.

States like Ohio dropped from a D+ last year to a D- this year because they passed a law permitting law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm. Brady assumes that this will lead to more gun violence and grades accordingly, without even looking for evidence that it actually does.

Since criminals prefer disarmed victims, more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens actually means less crime. Recent studies by the Center for Disease Control and National Research Council tried to link the prevalence of guns to gun violence, but actually found that no amount of gun control reduced crime. Neither organization is considered Second Amendment friendly, and had they actually looked at the data objectively could have easily concluded that the opposite was true.

So more than anything, the Brady grades are a measure of how well states are doing to take away freedom from law abiding citizens. The only ones who should hope for good Brady grades are criminals, while freedom loving Americans are actually better off failing.

ASIDE: I have to take issue with Brady's arithmetic. Out of the 7 grades given, Virginia received: B, B, C, F, F, F, F, with an overall grade of C-. The way I figure it, we got a solid D average. Nevada had higher grades: D, B, B, F, A, F, D- and came in at a D overall, so the categories might be weighted unevenly.