{"id":115252,"date":"2026-02-22T16:17:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T22:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=115252"},"modified":"2026-02-22T16:18:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T22:18:03","slug":"115252","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=115252","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0We\u2019ve Been Running a Huge, Real-World Experiment in the Expansion of Carrying Guns in America\u2026Here Are the Results.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The United States is currently experiencing what is likely to be a\u00a0record-low in homicide<\/a>, which has occurred at the same time as a massive expansion in firearm carry rights across the country. I have\u00a0previously written<\/a>
\nabout how those with carry permits almost never commit crime. State-level data proves it, and even gun-skeptical research organizations\u00a0have recognized<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cevidence generally shows that, as a group, [carry permit] license holders are particularly law abiding and rarely are convicted for violent crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet this irrefutable data didn\u2019t stop the usual antigun suspects from predicting doom when the Supreme Court first issued its ruling in\u00a0New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen<\/em>\u00a0in 2022. There, the Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual\u2019s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home. Gun control groups angrily claimed that the decision would lead to dramatic increases in violence.<\/p>\n

For example, the then-Chief Counsel of Brady, Jonathan Lowy,\u00a0said that<\/a>\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0\u201cis extremist judicial activism at its worst, and Americans may die as a result of what the Court issued in the sanctity of its protected chambers.\u201d John Feinblatt, President of Everytown for Gun Safety, said the Supreme Court chose \u201cto put our communities in even greater danger with gun violence on the rise across the country.\u201d Giffords claimed the ruling would \u201cescalate gun violence,\u201d \u201cspur unlawful militia activity,\u201d \u201cembolden those inclined to vigilante justice,\u201d \u201cincrease violence at protests,\u201d and cause \u201cmore domestic violence and hate crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antigun politicians made similar breathless predictions. Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0was a dangerous decision that \u201cwill make America a less safe country.\u201d Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0it \u201cseverely undermines public safety not just in New York City, but around the country.\u201d Senator Alex Padilla of California\u00a0put it more bluntly<\/a>: \u201cToday\u2019s decision will make our communities less safe, plain and simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Countless other examples abound. I encourage you to follow\u00a0@2Aupdates<\/a>\u00a0if you want to constantly be reminded of all these claims.<\/p>\n

We all make incorrect predictions from time to time, but the degree to which opponents of the Second Amendment were wrong is simply astounding.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Image:\u00a0Jeff-alytics<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not only has homicide not risen,\u00a0it has fallen to record lows<\/em>. 2025 may have been our best year for intentional homicide ever.<\/p>\n

As the Council on Criminal Justice\u00a0explained<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

The antigun predictions weren\u2019t just wrong, they were hilariously wrong. They said America would turn into the \u201cWild West\u201d and the streets would be awash in blood from the regular gunfighting we\u2019d all be engaged in.<\/p>\n

None of that happened.<\/p>\n

Turning to firearm-related homicide in particular,\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0didn\u2019t mark the start of a new violent era, it was instead the beginning of a new chapter of relative peace and tranquility. Indeed, when you look at month-by-month firearm-related homicide data from the CDC, the summer of 2022 represented close to the peak of the post-Covid homicide surge, eclipsed only slightly by the two summers preceding it. Since then, there has been a dramatic and sustained decline:<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0ruling was handed down in June of 2022. That month saw 1,769 firearm-related homicides nationwide. But the same month two years later, June of 2024, had 1,424. And while final data isn\u2019t yet available from the CDC, by all accounts 2025 was even lower still.<\/p>\n

Perhaps antigun activists would argue here that other firearm-related crime could be increasing, even if homicide is falling. But the data dispels that notion too.<\/p>\n

According to the Council on Criminal Justice<\/a>, aggravated assaults with a firearm across the 11 cities they measured \u2014 Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Little Rock, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Nashville, Philadelphia, San Francisco, St. Paul, and Washington DC \u2014 were also down from their 2021 peak, and are now lower than they were pre-pandemic:<\/p>\n

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Several of the sharpest declines in homicide have come in cities which have been forced to issue carry permits on a shall-issue basis for the first time in their modern history, thanks to\u00a0Bruen<\/em>. I have highlighted some of those cities in the chart here:<\/p>\n

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This pattern persists on a state-by-state level, too. Since 2022 and\u00a0Bruen<\/em>, there are two broad categories of carry rights expansion:<\/p>\n

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  1. Former may-issue states (a couple of which were effectively no-issue) that now must issue permits on a shall-issue basis because of\u00a0Bruen<\/em>. This category includes\u00a0California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Shall-issue states that adopted permitless \u201cconstitutional\u201d carry, i.e., you don\u2019t even need a permit to carry as long as you can lawfully possess a firearm. States in this category include\u00a0Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Carolina.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Collectively, I will refer to these 16 states as the \u201crights-expanding states.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Florida is particularly notable because it saw perhaps the fiercest opposition from gun control groups when it moved to adopt constitutional carry. Giffords ran a press release titled\u00a0The Facts Are Clear: Permitless Carry will Make Florida Less Safe<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Using the\u00a0CDC\u2019s WONDER tool<\/a>, we can check how Florida and the rest of the rights-expanding states have done on firearm-related homicide since 2022. That year, these states totaled 8,479 firearm-related homicides amongst them, for a rate of 5.5 per 100,000:<\/p>\n

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    By 2024, most of these states saw significant declines in firearm-related homicide, and their combined rate dropped to 4.2 per 100,000, a 24% drop.<\/p>\n

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    Only two of the states, Delaware and Hawaii, saw increases. Even then, the increases in those two states were slight while the drops in many of the other states were considerable. California saw a 28% reduction. Georgia is down 23%. New Jersey homicides dropped 32%. New York is down 33%. Ohio fell 22%.\u00a0And Florida, which Giffords confidently and loudly asserted would be less safe thanks to constitutional carry, was also down 28% in firearm-related homicide.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Overall, the nation as a whole also saw a roughly 24% drop in firearm-related homicide, identical to the reduction in the rights-expanding states. Thus, the rights-expanding states matched the decline of the country as a whole, and several of them actually comfortably beat the national decline in firearm-related homicide.<\/p>\n

    I won\u2019t claim that carry rights expansion caused the national decline in homicide. I don\u2019t have sufficient evidence for that. I do believe it\u2019s at least plausible that news coverage of the\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0ruling made the American public (including criminals) more aware of the fact that anyone could be carrying a firearm, which may have deterred some criminals and contributed to the decline in homicide. But I certainly can\u2019t prove it.\u00a0Experts in the field<\/a>\u00a0continue to\u00a0debate<\/a>\u00a0what has caused the national decline in homicide, and it may be a long time before there\u2019s any scholarly consensus.<\/p>\n

    Whatever the cause, its existence definitely shatters the fear-mongering post-Bruen<\/em>\u00a0claims of the antigun groups and the politicians they support.<\/p>\n

    This has been a massive, real-world test of the \u201cmore legal carry = more gun violence\u201d hypothesis the gun control advocates peddle. They explicitly and loudly predicted disaster. The data has proved them wrong in spectacular fashion.<\/p>\n

    Kostas Moros is Director of Legal Research and Education for the<\/em>\u00a0Second Amendment Foundation<\/a>. This post was adapted by SNW from an article\u00a0posted at X<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u00a0We\u2019ve Been Running a Huge, Real-World Experiment in the Expansion of Carrying Guns in America\u2026Here Are the Results. The United States is currently experiencing what is likely to be a\u00a0record-low in homicide, which has occurred at the same time as a massive expansion in firearm carry rights across the country. I have\u00a0previously written about how … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115252"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115255,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115252\/revisions\/115255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}