The Correlation Between Lax Gun Laws and Crime Gun Exports to Other States

My recent post on the statistics for deaths of law enforcement, in which I was focusing on the deaths by firearms in the context of the Virginia Tech shooting of a police officer, raised some interesting questions.
One of those questions had to do with the problems of guns used in crimes coming across borders from other states and gun regulation, as it pertains to firearm deaths (and injuries) generally, and those of law enforcement specifically.
Because most of the pro-gun crowd seem to have a difficult time acknowledging the connection and correlation between the number of firearms in this country, and the number of firearms deaths and injuries in this country, as a basis for firearm regulation, I found the following site to be of interest.  It shows very clearly how lax firearm laws in some states create greater problems for the adjoining states.  I think this is a good foundation for why we need uniform federal regulation of firearms, rather than the lax and inconsistent, and sometimes very ill enforced, patchwork of state laws.
The web site Trace the Guns has an excellent interactive map of crime gun exports, that shows clearly which states have the highest exports, and that documents a comment made by our own democommie on a related post:

democommie said...

FatWhiteMan: This: <i>"but the availability of firearms from outside of Virginia coming over their borders remain a problem."</i> Is, to you, an irresponsible statement? I think there are some giant leaps on your side.

One of the states which shows the HIGHEST rate of firearms export to other states is in fact West Virginia, which borders Virginia. I believe has relatively lax firearms laws, per this article in Wikipedia which conveniently provides a summary of gun laws for comparison by state.
Where I believe our readers who check out the Wikipedia article "Gun Laws in the United States (by state)" will find the difference between the two states is in the kind of check that is mandated in Virginia that were enacted after the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting; those measures are addressed in a recent post here.
Clearly the information on the weapon, the identity of the apparent shooter who subsequently committed suicide, the motive and other details are still emerging, but I believe the contrast between the export of firearms from West Virginia, in comparison to Virginia and other states, and in comparison to the data on law enforcement deaths is significant to the ongoing debate here.