Event Recording: More Guns, Less Murder?
Category: Safety
FBI Warns California That Retaliation From Iran May Be on the Way.
Iran has already retaliated with drone strikes across parts of the Middle East. Apparently, the plan for California was already in place, even before the U.S. and Israel launched their initial strikes against Iran on February 28.
Neither the FBI nor the White House has issued a comment on the matter.
ABC claims to have read the alert sent out. It says in part:
We recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United State Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the U.S. conducted strikes against Iran. We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.
The New York Post describes it as an “army of drones” that could be launched from a vessel off the West Coast of the United States. The post also suggests that California is home to about half a million Iranian dissidents, the largest number of any state in the U.S., but it’s not clear if that’s why it was targeted specifically.
On Wednesday, a reporter asked President Donald Trump if he was concerned about Iranian attacks on American soil. He said, “No, I am not.”
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security has said Iran and its proxies could pose a threat through targeted attacks on the US, but a large-scale attack was highly unlikely.
ABC also points out that the Mexican cartels’ use of drones at the U.S.-Mexico border has become an increasing concern for the federal government in recent months.
John Cohen, the former head of intelligence for the Department of Homeland Security, told ABC that he’s concerned about drone attacks from both the West Coast and the border. “We know Iran has an extensive presence in Mexico and South America, they have relationships, they have the drones and now they have the incentive to conduct attacks,” he said. “The FBI is smart for putting this warning out so that state and locals can be better able to prepare and respond to these types of threats. Information like this is critically important for law enforcement.”
This is a developing story.
Women in South Africa take up guns and martial arts for protection against gender violence
BRONKHORSTSPRUIT, South Africa (AP) — At the command of a female instructor, a line of girls and women, some wearing pink ear protectors, shoot five rounds at a target with 9 mm pistols as they undergo firearm training at a range in the agricultural town of Bronkhorstspruit just outside South Africa’s capital, Pretoria.
The group, some as young as 13 and others up to 65, are looking for ways to protect themselves in a country where gender-based violence is such a critical problem that it was declared a national disaster by the government in November.
“Check your grip, check your line of sight,” shouts Claire van der Westhuizen, the lead female instructor at Lone Operator shooting range, as women with well-manicured nails reload for another round.
The training course is specifically designed for women and offers practice in real-world scenarios like self-defense firing while lying on their stomachs and backs.
Femicide rates in South Africa are among the highest in the world, according to U.N. Women, the United Nations agency for gender equality. A South African study in 2022 found more than 35% of South African women aged 18 and older had experienced physical or sexual violence at some point. In most cases, the perpetrator was an intimate partner.
Joining ‘a family of support’
Sunette du Toit, a working 51-year-old grandmother, was pushed to take up firearm training after surviving a home invasion by five men who tied her up and ransacked her house, she told The Associated Press.
“I was not in a position to defend myself at that point,” du Toit said. “I had to do this (firearm training) for myself to gain my confidence back to be able to move in public, and even in my own house, without feeling vulnerable.”
She called the women’s firearm training group “a family of support.”
Firearms in South Africa are heavily regulated. Anyone who wants to own a gun for self-defense must be over 21 and pass proficiency tests and background checks.
Various self-defense trainings for women are popping up throughout the country.
“Could Be”? I don’t know what you’d call what happened in Austin anything else.
Be Armed and Ready – the Asymmetrical Battlefield Could Be Here at Home
Asymmetrical warfare means applying the strengths you have against an overwhelming enemy’s weaknesses. The goat sex pest mullahs have been utterly humiliated by America’s and Israel’s overwhelming military superiority in conventional forces, with our airplanes, drones, and other systems traversing their airspace at will after we established total air supremacy. Our ships sail the seas, unthreatened and unchallenged, while most of the Iranian Navy morphs into submarines. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have the capacity to strike back, and that doesn’t mean that we don’t have potential weaknesses. Everybody has weaknesses. Ours is located in the United States itself, our homeland, where we’re at. It’s already happening on a small scale, with open immigration poster child Ngdiaga Diagne shooting up a bar in Texas for Allah. We’re vulnerable here, and you are potentially on the front line of this war.
Time to be ready. Time to be armed. Time to get some.
What’s our vulnerability? Civilians, normal Americans, who Iranian proxy terrorists could murder in heaps. Until Donald Trump came back, we had four years of wide-open borders where every Third World indigent with shoes and a dream was able to sashay into our country, unimpeded and often subsidized by President Eggplant and his Democrat administration.
We know the Iranians have agents in the United States – that’s open source, and everybody gets The FBI is on full alert, now that it protects American citizens again instead of oppressing them. This is not wolf-crying. The Iranian mullahs tried to murder Donald Trump and others and have caused lots of other mischief outside their borders. Now, the Iranian jihadis are not superstars, and they’re not super-geniuses. They are cunning and relatively competent at times in doing what they do, and what they do best is attack innocent civilians.
As we can see, when they come up against soldiers, they die a lot. Well, there are lots of innocent civilians here in the United States, and it is not unreasonable to assume that the Iranian Republican Guard Corps has infiltrated sleeper cells into the United States. Once activated, they have the potential to go on a murder spree unparalleled in American history, one that would make Saturday night in Chicago look like a picnic with the Muppets.
I wrote about this in my bestselling novel, published not long after October 7, because October 7 is the asymmetrical terrorist mass assault template, called The Attack. The Iranian thugs helped plan and approve the Hamas massacre of innocent Israelis (as well as some Americans), which is more of the reason that they’re getting nothing but what they deserve right now.
The idea behind an asymmetrical strike is simple. You send in minimally trained but maximally indoctrinated killers through the open border, and they wait. They wait in small groups, taking no action until activated. It’s not hard for them to get weapons into the United States, and part of the beauty is that you don’t need complex weapons.
The AK-47 family of assault rifles was designed so that Siberian peasants would have an effective weapon system they could operate, even if they came from a village still baffled by devices such as the wheel. You can buy ammunition in the United States, and magazines, and recently, it was not that hard to ship fully automatic weapons across the border. Until Trump closed it, there was no shortage of cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl. The cartels would eagerly assist, for a price paid out of the pallets of cash that Barack Obama and Ben Rhodes dropped on them.
The advantages of this are obvious. Under Biden, nobody was looking for them. We didn’t do any interior enforcement. Now we famously are, and we can only hope that getting Iranian-adjacent illegal aliens out of the country is one of ICE’s top priorities. Of course, neurotic wine women and femboy libs will have a conniption over us deporting these potential terrorists, but we need to do it, no matter how hard they blow their whistles.
Just remember that the killers don’t have to be Iranian. They can be from Chechnya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Turkistan, or some other random -stan. The Iranians aren’t picky about who they work with. Iranians are Shia and Hamas are Sunni, but that didn’t stop them from getting together to murder Christians and Jews. Anybody from the Middle East who’s over here illegally, and some who are here legally, absolutely have the potential of acting for Iran if activated.
We’ve already had jihad murders here, like the Pulse nightclub and San Bernardino shootings. We hear less about them lately because Muslim murderers have had the limelight stolen by trans deviants who’ve gone on killing sprees over their pronoun gripes, but that doesn’t mean they are gone, as totally as real Americans as you and me, Ndiaga Diagnes demonstrated.
The beauty of this scenario for our enemy is that it is a quintessential asymmetrical attack. It takes the weaknesses of the Iranians, like the inability to coordinate forces, lack of logistical and administrative support, the absence of command and control, and paucity of concurrent communications, and turns those into strengths. When those don’t exist, the cells are hard to locate. If you have small groups of fanatics, whose sole purpose is to go to a given location at a given time, and kill everybody they see until they themselves are killed, you don’t need any kind of support.
They are akin to drones – meat drones that their overlords can fire and forget. And since American forces tend to look at the enemy support systems to find weaknesses, which is one of our advantages because we do it so well, you end up neutralizing the American advantage. Americans want to beat the enemy long before there’s an actual gunfight. In this way, against an Iranian enemy, an asymmetrical attack would ensure lots of gunfights, giving Iranian proxies the ability to cause significant casualties where they wouldn’t have the ability to do that otherwise.
In The Attack, thousands of these little cells are activated and strike, murdering scores of Americans before the government is able to form a coordinated response. But, as in reality, in the book, we see what I suspect we would see if the Iranians attempt something like this in real life. What we would see is normal Americans fighting back.
You see, if the homeland becomes a battlefield, we all become soldiers. We have a great counterintelligence team, and the FBI is back to protecting the American people instead of the Democrat elite. Still, they, along with our great law enforcement first responders, can’t be everywhere all the time. We citizens, can. All of us could be face-to-face with the enemy, whether another Ndiaga Diagne at a bar or a bunch of like-minded psychos in a church, a school, a shopping mall, or at a militantly cis-gender hockey game; their goal would be to bring the war to us, and our obligation would be to fight it and win it. But how do normal citizens do that?
You buy guns and ammunition. You train with them. You carry them legally. You get into the mental mindset that bad things can happen, and you need to be ready. Except in the blue states, where they put up hurdles to stop you from defending yourself, your family, your community, and your Constitution. Gavin Hairstyle and his ilk would rather you die than upset the aforementioned neurotic wine women and femboy libs who fear guns and manhood.
This admonition that you must be a warrior too is not some hooah big talk. That’s reality. As everybody knows, except liars and fools, armed citizens have long been able to intervene to stop crimes with their lawfully carried weapons. What we’re talking about here is something even more sinister than some gender goblin with a grudge over his unwanted penis shooting up a preschool; it’s terrorists shooting up everything as part of a plan to commit mass murder as terrorist retaliation against the United States for taking out their pals in Tehran.
You’ve got to be ready. If you can legally carry a weapon on you, you should, and a long weapon in the truck provides you with critical combat options if this goes down. But you should also practice with your guns. And don’t forget the other component of this – medical training and gear to stop the bleeding should you find yourself in the middle of a terrorist attack.
You didn’t ask to be a hero, but you are an American citizen, and that makes you hero-capable. It is your duty as an American citizen to do your best to protect your fellow citizens. If you can fight, you’ve got to be ready within the guardrails of your abilities and the law.
Our great troops are fighting this battle overseas as we speak. There is a non-zero chance we will have to fight this battle in America. Some people will dismiss this warning as silly. Some people will dismiss this as paranoid. They will run when it happens. You need to decide in advance that you won’t.
If it doesn’t come to fruition, that’s more than fine with us. We don’t want a fight, but, dammit, if those b******s start a fight in our home, we need to be ready to finish it.
Suspicion Confirmed; A Lone Wolf Jihadi
NEW: Texas gunman, who killed 2 and injured 14 at a bar, identified as Ndiaga Diagne, a U.S. citizen born in Senegal.
Diagne was wearing a shirt that said "Property of Allah" with an undershirt referring to Iran, according to multiple sources.
— BNO News (@BNONews) March 1, 2026
Brady in 2022: "(Bruen) will assuredly result in more gun violence immediately".
Brady in 2026: "Violent crime has been declining since 2022."
Bwaa haa haa haa haa haa… 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 https://t.co/jmX9moWfd5 pic.twitter.com/hVkKfeEiig
— 2A History (@2aHistory) February 25, 2026
Oh look…a Robert Spitzer op-ed. Let’s take a look and see what kind of brilliant insights this very respected expert has for us. He is, after all, an academic that antigun courts take super-seriously. The article’s headline itself — What Happens When the Second Amendment Collides With Public Safety? — is based on a false premise. The reality is, the Second Amendment right to carry need not ever collide with “public safety.”
Especially in the context of the Pretti shooting, Spitzer seems to implicitly accept the argument made by some administration officials (and Trump himself) that the mere act of carrying at a protest means you are asking to be shot by police.
This fraught political moment has thus found the Trump administration in the uncomfortable position of taking criticism from both liberals who blame heavy-handed federal agent tactics and conservatives who bristle at the administration’s seeming abandonment of public gun carry rights.
On the one hand, civilian gun carry is indeed a right under the Second Amendment according to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in the Bruen case where the high court said that individuals have a “right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” The court proposed no exception for doing so in a public gathering.
Spitzer says carry is indeed a right “according to the Supreme Court.” Interesting. I thought it was because the plain text of the Second Amendment says we have a right to bear arms, which all relevant historical sources confirm is a reference to public carry.
If you ever wondered why an “expert” like Spitzer (and the other usual suspects) always takes the side of the government in gun rights litigation, you can start with the fact that they clearly don’t believe the Second Amendment protects an individual right at all.
On the other hand, the consequences of such action are clear. Public gun carrying, especially in the context of a public demonstration or similar gathering is, no matter the intentions of the carrier, a terrible idea.
I should have included the very next paragraph. He basically concedes carry is a right (because SCOTUS said so), but then says it’s a terrible idea to exercise that right.
What to do about Mexican Drug Cartels: Letters of Marque
By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Special to Liberty Park Press
The United States Congress still retains full authority to issue Letters of Marque, although none have been issued for more than a hundred years.
A Letter of Marque was actually a simple concept. They allowed private citizens in private warships to attack enemy vessels during wartime. These privateers could then take ownership of whatever plunder they seized—gold, weapons or the captured ships—after an admiralty court ruled in their favor and took a percentage of the profits.
Letters of Marque were used for hundreds of years across the globe, because they allowed a country to enlarge the size of their navy very quickly and cheaply.
The authority to issue Letters of Marque can still be found in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution: “The Congress shall have Power … to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”
Congressman Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, and Senator Mike Lee, a Republican of Utah, who both have extremely solid Second-Amendment credentials, have drafted bills that would revitalize the Letters of Marque, in order to target Mexican drug cartels.
Congressman Burchett described the bill in a phone call Monday morning:
“It allows the president to contract out to privateers and go after the cartels,” he said. “These would be top-tier operators, SEALs, Special Forces, Marine Raiders and commando types. Some are still working as private operators. It allows private citizens to act against the cartels. In President Trump’s first term, when he got [Former Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem] Soleimani, the Democrats just berated our military leaders because they didn’t ask for their permission. If the Democrats still want us to ask for their permission, we got some real problems. This is constitutionally provided and has been done before. We went after the Barbary pirates. It’s constitutionally provided and within the law. In this day and age, we need it. The constitution grants congress the power to grant these letters.”
Senator Lee’s bill is titled “S. 3567: Cartel Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of 2025.”
It is described as: “A bill to authorize the President of the United States to issue letters of marque and reprisal with respect to acts of aggression against the United States by a member of a cartel, or a member of a cartel-linked organization, or any conspirator associated with a cartel, and for other purposes.”
It was introduced before the latest outbreak of cartel violence, which has targeted American tourists in Mexico.
It specifies that cartels “present an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
Senator Lee’s bill would allow “privately armed and equipped persons” to use “all means reasonably necessary” to operate outside our borders and seize any individual and their property who the President has determined to be a member of a drug cartel, or a member of a cartel-linked organization, “who is responsible for an act of aggression against the United States.”
Congressman Burchett was asked if he has discussed his bill with President Trump.
“I have not yet, but I put it out there,” he said. “It is constitutionally sound. We live in dangerous times, and we’ve got American people who need it.”
Hope Isn’t a Plan: Is Your Church a Sitting Duck?
Denial isn’t just stupid—it has no survival value. Acting as though the wolves only hunt other sheep in other pastures? That’s not faith, that’s wishful thinking. So why then do many Christian churches (along with synagogues) opt not to have safety teams?
Are they counting on God’s divine protection? God helps those who help themselves and standing unprepared for evil to come knocking has real-world consequences for real people.
I’ve been to a handful of churches that have top notch safety teams and like many, I’ve been to churches that not only had multiple unlocked and unmonitored entrances — some dark by the way — that had no safety team at all. Unfortunately, unprepared or ill-prepared is still the norm. Yes, even at events and major religious holidays that bring crowds.
These unprotected churches are sitting ducks. At one Christmas Eve service I attended, no one had radios or earpieces. No one, save a dad or three who looked like hard-charging alphas, were anywhere to be seen or found. And those men clearly were on dad duty, not part of a safety and security team.
The greeters? Sweet smiles, zero comms. At that service a few years ago, many in the congregation joined me and slipped in through a shadowy lower-level door from the back parking lot…unmanned, unlocked, and unmonitored. It was a perfect back door through which to stage a nightmare. Before, during and after the service? The pastor stood exposed like a trophy buck in an open field.
I run with security-minded folks, including some who have done it professionally. When I talked about this one particular church they simply shook their heads in disbelief. “They’re one bad incident from going under,” one said. Indeed.
When one, with sarcasm in his voice, raised the possibility of a super-professional, Secret Service level team, we all laughed. With open side doors and zero visible presence? That’s not discreet, that’s delusional. Unmonitored, dark entrances and an utter lack of thought about congregants’ safety? That kind of negligence is wishful thinking and can turn peace on earth into last rites.
Why do so many religious institutions still play ostrich? Because facing evil means admitting it exists. As for admitting that guns might be necessary to protect people, that’s clearly too icky for the pearl-clutchers in the congregation who think psalms and lordly vibes are body armor enough. As if lunatics and criminals give a damn about holy water and hymnals.
The only thing that stops bad guys with evil in their hearts is a good guy or gal with a gun.
BLUF
Draconian restrictions on the right to armed self-defense in public don’t make peaceable and law-abiding citizens safer. They just render them far less capable of defending themselves and others.
Look at the Defensive Gun Uses that Hawaii Wants to Criminalize.
Late last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Wolford v. Lopez, a case challenging a newly imposed Hawaii law that presumptively bans concealed carry permit holders from any private property open to the public (like gas stations and shopping malls) unless they first get express permission from the owner. Combined with other restrictions, the law has the practical effect of making lawful public carry virtually impossible in Hawaii.
Fortunately, the nation’s highest court appears likely to strike down the new restriction. But there’s still so much work left for the court to do when it comes to protecting the right to keep and bear arms—including, specifically, against infringements by the Hawaiian government. Even without the express permission requirement hanging over their heads, Hawaiian concealed carry permit holders will still be prohibited from exercising their rights in an absurdly long list of “sensitive places.”
These include, among other locations:
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Any bar or restaurant that serves alcohol, regardless of whether the permit holder imbibes;
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Any “stadium, movie theater, or concert hall”;
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Any place at which any sporting event of any level of competition is being held;
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Any beach, playground, or park, including “any state park, state monument, county park, tennis court, golf course, swimming pool, or other recreation area or facility under control, maintenance, and management of the State or a county”;
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Any parking area adjacent to the prohibited locations above.
Constitutionally, it’s abhorrent. As a matter of public policy, it’s laughable – and dangerous.
Criminality is not random
Only 0.2% of people ever commit murder, yet 67% of **all murders**are committed by people with prior arrests
People inclined to commit crime will continue to, unless stopped.
When those people are stopped, the crime stops. https://t.co/fDdyO5V3o3 pic.twitter.com/Uijz5E6v1S
— Arthur MacWaters (@ArthurMacwaters) February 15, 2026
When Worship Is Attacked, Churches Must Be Prepared to Restore Order
Jordan Howe
Your Church Needs a Response Plan to Ensure Orderly Worship
On January 18, a violent group of “protestors” covertly entered Cities Church in Minnesota and caused a massive disruption of their worship service.
In the days since the event, many Christians have responded in different ways. Some have boasted about the strength and firepower of their congregants (“I’d like to see them try that in my church!”). Others have chosen to emphasize the need for gospel ministry while avoiding any talk about church security (“We just preach the gospel!”).
As both a deacon at my church and a current law enforcement officer for the last decade, I both think about these issues and live them out. That’s why I started Kingdom Defense Training, a ministry designed to train and assist local churches to think more biblically about safety and security. Unfortunately, I would argue that both approaches above overlook the ministerial aspect of church security and fail to recognize that a church must also protect itself physically, civilly, and spiritually.
Proposed WV House Bill Would Expand Castle Doctrine, Strengthen Self-Defense Protections
CHARLESTON, WV (LOOTPRESS) — A newly introduced bill in the West Virginia House of Delegates would expand the state’s Castle Doctrine laws, strengthening legal protections for people who use force — including deadly force — in self-defense.
House Bill 4878, introduced on January 28, would broaden when and where West Virginians may legally defend themselves, their homes, and others, while also shielding them from both criminal charges and civil lawsuits when force is lawfully used.
The legislation clarifies that a lawful occupant may use reasonable force, including deadly force, against an intruder or attacker inside a home or residence if they reasonably believe the intruder could cause death, serious bodily harm, or intends to commit a felony.
The bill also extends those protections beyond the walls of the home to include the curtilage — areas immediately surrounding a residence, such as yards, driveways, and porches — and removes any duty to retreat when a person is lawfully present.
Know Your Gun: When you trust your life to a tool, you must know it inside and out.
We know that when we are faced with the threat of serious bodily injury or death, our focus will be on the threat. This is not so much a conscious effort as a fact that our natural survival system has taken over. For that reason, our manipulation of our defensive equipment must be practiced until its operation and deployment almost become subconscious functions. This is the main reason so many of us caution against the continual switching back and forth of that equipment—especially our daily-carry guns. While firing the defensive shot should certainly be a conscious decision, getting the gun into play should be a task that can be accomplished without thinking. To accomplish this, one really needs to know their defensive handgun.
The only negligent discharge with injuries I ever witnessed in a training class involved an older fellow who had carried a revolver in his law-enforcement career. Now, retired and working security, he had decided to carry a striker-fired pistol. The only trouble was that he had not taken the time to actually learn his new gun, and had real trouble keeping his finger off the trigger when the sights weren’t on the target. The double-action revolver trigger requires a significant amount of pressure, so this gross violation of the safety rules probably never resulted in a negative outcome for him, but that’s pure luck. With the lighter trigger of a striker-fired pistol, luck is less available. As you might guess, he shot himself in the leg while improperly reholstering his new gun.
Sometimes manufacturers make things difficult, like Smith & Wesson with its Models 39 and 59. Those were good, solid guns, but you pushed the safety up instead of down—the opposite of the single-action semi-automatics. If someone wasn’t really checked out on those, they might get a click instead of a bang or vice versa, either of which could create problems depending upon the situation.
So, it is critical for the armed citizen to totally familiarize themselves with their chosen defense gun. This means knowing how to safely load and unload the gun. It involves knowing the proper manipulation of all the various safety controls the gun might have. And, it involves knowing what the most common malfunctions might be and how to deal with them. All of these things are not going to be learned in a day, but take time and training. Once these things are learned, they must be practiced.
While the semi-automatic pistol is certainly the most popular defensive handgun, revolver shooters don’t get a free pass. Do you know how to keep your ejector rod from backing out? Do you know how to avoid having a spent cartridge get stuck under the ejector star? Finally, in the midst of a gunfight where you can only get a partial reload into your revolver, which way does the cylinder rotate? We know that Colts rotate clockwise whereas Smith & Wesson rotate counterclockwise, but what about the double-action Taurus or your Ruger SP101? You’d better find out.
Knowing the gun one carries is probably the main reason why many of the old-timers have stayed with guns of older design. It’s not that the new guns aren’t as good, it’s just that the older models are what these folks grew up with. They know them, know how they operate, know their shortcomings and know how to deal with any types of problems that might arise. That’s what knowing your gun is all about—the ability to effectively bring it into play without a lot of conscious thought.
By contrast, an old-timer of my acquaintance—a double-action revolver guy of long standing—advises that he is going to switch to a 9 mm for everyday carry. He has spent a good deal of range time and is satisfied with the function and accuracy of his new choice. Nonetheless, his next step is to attend a class at Gunsite with his new gun. All of which is part of the process of knowing your gun.
Finally, to end this piece on a lighter note, I would share this humorous—and probably apocryphal—story of a young man who just had to have a 1911. Obviously, he had never even fired one prior to his purchase. Within days, he was back in the gun store complaining that his new gun jammed. The in-house gunsmith checked it, cleaned and oiled it and reported that he hadn’t found any problem.
Sometime later, the young shooter returned, still complaining about his gun jamming. This time the gunsmith, after checking the gun, took the customer back to the shooting trap so he could witness the gun being fired. The gunsmith fired an entire magazine into the test trap and the slide locked back. “Look! It jammed again,” said the customer.
Know your defense gun. I mean really know your chosen defense gun. It is important.
Report: Murders Plummeted in 2025; Meanwhile, Gun Ownership Up
By Dave Workman
A new report from the Council on Criminal Justice says homicides have declined more than 20 percent in 2025 from the previous year, based on data from 40 large U.S. cities, and the media is playing it up.
As note by the New York Times, “Last year will likely register the lowest national homicide rate in 125 years and the largest single-year drop on record.”
According to the Council on Criminal Justice report:
- Looking at changes in violent offenses, the rate of reported homicides was 21% lower in 2025 than in 2024in the 35 study cities providing data for that crime, representing 922 fewer homicides. There were 9% fewer reported aggravated assaults, 22% fewer gun assaults, and 2% fewer domestic violence incidents last year than in 2024. Robbery fell by 23% while carjackings (a type of robbery) decreased by 43%.
- When nationwide data for jurisdictions of all sizes is reported by the FBI later this year, there is a strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will drop to about 4.0 per 100,000 residents. That would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900, and would mark the largest single-year percentage drop in the homicide rate on record.
This has occurred at a time when gun ownership appears to be at record levels in the U.S. Raw data from the FBI’s National Instant Check System shows more than 2 million background checks each month during 2025, and adjusted data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation shows gun sales have declined, but they are still healthy.
In its annual report, NSSF included this caveat: “Though not a direct correlation to firearms sales, the NSSF-adjusted NICS data provide an additional picture of current market conditions. In addition to other purposes, NICS is used to check transactions for sales or transfers of new or used firearms.
“It should be noted that these statistics represent the number of firearm background checks initiated through the NICS. They do not represent the number of firearms sold or sales dollars. Based on varying state laws, local market conditions and purchase scenarios, a one-to-one correlation cannot be made between a firearm background check and a firearm sale.”
When NSSF released its annual report on firearm production in the U.S., including import and export data from 2023, it estimated there were 506.1 million firearms in civilian possession from 1990 to 2023. It has likely increased from that figure by several million.
Establishment media reports on the plummeting murder statistics have ignored or carefully avoided any mention of increased gun ownership and the number of firearms in private hands.
For several years, the gun prohibition lobby has been adamant with predictions that increased private gun ownership would result in a dramatic increase in homicides. This new report suggests otherwise.
Personal Defense Tip: The Castle Doctrine Isn’t Absolute.
As part of January’s general grab-bag of weirdness, a Texas man is being charged with murder after he shot an armed home intruder. I know what you’re thinking: What about the castle doctrine? Not to mention it’s Texas. So what’s going on?
The comment section on the rather vague news reports are filled with opinionated social media experts claiming this guy will be out in no time and that he should totally sue local law enforcement for wrongful imprisonment. So, what’s the truth?
The truth is the castle doctrine isn’t absolute. That means you can’t do whatever the heck you feel like in your own home. Rules, people…there are rules.
Disclaimer: As always, please remember that I’m not an attorney and this isn’t legal advice. It’s simply information (and a dose of supposition) based on experience.
Folks, keep a firearm at the ready. If someone gets in your home to harm you please be prepared. https://t.co/3SoOj0ZFaj
— AWR Hawkins (@AWRHawkins) January 5, 2026