PORTLAND – A national gun control advocacy group has given Maine an F for having laws that it says fail to protect children from gun violence.

In the sixth annual analysis of state gun-control laws, the Washington-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said Maine was one of eight states to receive a failing grade.

The report said Maine ranked low because of lax laws regarding the sale or possession of guns by children, and no requirement for safety locks on guns. The report gave six states an A for having laws that it said protect children from violence.

Cathie Whittenburg, executive director of the Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence, said Maine’s laws make it easy for children to own or possess guns.

She said a person as young as 16 can legally purchase a gun in Maine, and that state law does not set a minimum age for gun possession.

“What kind of message are we sending when we say a 16-year-old can buy a handgun?” Whittenburg said. “To me, that’s not an age of responsibility for a handgun.”

Kelly Whitley, a spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association in Fairfax, Va., said the report does not link gun control laws with crime rates. She said Maine’s low crime rate – the FBI ranked Maine the fifth-safest state in 2001 – is more telling than its gun laws.

“If having one of the lowest violent crime rates in the country garners an F, then Maine should be proud of its grade,” Whitley said.

The Brady Campaign, formerly known as Handgun Control Inc., ranked states on seven types of legislation that it says protect children from gun violence. They include laws regarding juvenile possession of guns, gun sales to juveniles, gun storage, gun owner accountability and concealed weapons statutes.

The report said the average firearms death rate of youth in the states that received an F grade was 33 percent higher than the rate for the 10 states that received an A or B.

Sarah Brady, chairwoman of the Brady Campaign, said it is up to individual states to pass stricter gun control laws because Congress has failed to do so on the national level. “It has fallen to governors and state legislatures to take up the mantle of child safety and pass laws to protect our kids from gun violence,” she said in a statement.

Whitley called the Brady Campaign “politically inconsequential” and said the report is nothing more than an attempt to get attention.

“This study is a fruitless attempt to stay alive when the vast majority of Americans believe in protecting the Second Amendment and the rights of gun owners,” she said.

The report gave failing grades to Alabama, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana and Wyoming. California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey each received an A grade.