Earlier today, my friends at Shooting News Weekly forwarded me their report on crime and guns in America with the headline, "More Guns, Less Crime: Homicides Plunged as Firearm Freedom and Gun Ownership Have Soared."
Since they're the gun experts, I'd usually just post a quick link on Instapundit and leave it at that. But I have got to chime in on this one because the news beneath the headline is just too good not to. It's true that homicides have plunged, but what you might not know is that 2026 is on track "to hit its lowest point in over a century."
By my math, you'd have to go back to before Prohibition gang violence to find an America this at peace with itself. "Gun owners will note that the historically low homicide rate has come during the golden age of the Second Amendment," SNW practically crowed on Wednesday.
Before getting too exuberant, please remember that correlation is not causation. We can't look at the increasing number of Americans with legal firearms and the plunging homicide rate, and just sort of assume that one caused the other.
We're not lefties here, people — we know how to use reason and logic.
However.
We were reliably informed by the gun-grabbers for a very long time that more guns equals more crime, that easy access to suppressors would turn us into a nation of silent assassins (although that would be pretty cool), and all the rest of the panic-mongering.
I have some receipts. And you're welcome in advance.
The Supreme Court's 2008 Heller decision caused the following words to fall out of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty's mouth: "I’m disappointed in the Court’s ruling and believe introducing more handguns into the District will mean more handgun violence."
More recently, ranking Senate Judiciary Committee member Dianne Feinstein said during a 2019 hearing, "The NRA has a catchy saying, that good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns. Unfortunately, they ignore the reality, which is that more guns actually lead to more deadly situations."
"The bottom line is if we had fewer guns, we would have a lot fewer murders," then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in almost immediate response to the 2012 Aurora, Colo., theater shooting, because he's as ghoulish as he is opportunistic. "Do you really think you’d be safe if anybody in the audience could pull out a gun and start shooting?"
Maybe!
Because here we are with approximately 450–500 million firearms in private hands and a national homicide rate near historic lows, and in most parts of the country, roughly equivalent to a sleepy Swiss village during Sunday Mass.
And Another Thing: Bloomberg also complained in 2012 that "We are the only developed country in the world that has more guns than people." Well, yeah — how else you gonna teach the children to dual-wield?
There will always be parts of big cities where good people know not to walk at night. But I like to think that there are plenty of suburbs and exurbs where criminals know not to prey at any time.
Speaking of receipts, now that you can practically pick up a suppressor at the cash register — assuming any are in stock — print this out and stick it on your fridge for later: "Silencers are a serious public safety risk, making it much harder for law enforcement and bystanders to react quickly to gunshots. If silencers are deregulated, the gun industry stands to gain millions of dollars at the expense of the safety of our communities and law enforcement."
That's what Everytown claimed last year. Let's see over the next few years how reality stacks up against the claims.
Because when it's lefties versus reality, put your money on reality every time.
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