Anti-gun advocates have long held that loosening concealed carry laws would result in rampant violent crime and “blood running in the streets.” So, imaging their furor when John Lott published his book More Guns, Less Crime back in 1998. “How dare Lott write such a travesty?” they decried. “Everyone knows more guns equals more crime.”
Fast forward nearly a quarter century, and gun-ban advocates again threw a fit. When the U.S. Supreme Court passed down its ruling in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, affirming that the Second Amendment protected firearms carried outside the home, gun-haters again predicted gloom and doom.
“Today’s ruling is out of step with the bipartisan majority in Congress that is on the verge of passing significant gun safety legislation, and out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who support gun safety measures,” John Feinblatt, president of so-called Everytown for Gun Safety, said at the time. “Let’s be clear: the Supreme Court got this decision wrong, choosing to put our communities in even greater danger with gun violence on the rise across the country.”
Additionally, Lisa Vicens and Samuel Levander described at Scotusblog.com a future with burgeoning violent crime because of the Bruen ruling.
“The Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen will have a detrimental effect on the safety and well-being of New Yorkers and Americans,” Vicens and Levander wrote. “As Justice Stephen Breyer acknowledged, and as we demonstrated in an amicus brief we submitted on behalf of social scientists and public health experts, leading social science research shows that ‘proper cause’ regimes, like the one in New York, lead to lower rates of homicide and violent crime when compared to ‘shall issue’ regimes.”
Again, the naysayers couldn’t have been more wrong. During the period since Bruen, when more Americans have begun carrying a firearm for self-defense, violent crime has dropped dramatically, according to statistics from the Real-Time Crime Index (RTCI).
The RTCI is a sample of reported crime data from hundreds of law enforcement agencies nationwide which mimics national crime trends with as little lag and the most accuracy possible. Crime statistics are inexact, but sampling agencies in this way is a proven method for accurately measuring trends while waiting for national crime estimates published each year. Standardizing the offenses collected and time periods measured from hundreds of agencies makes it possible to evaluate trends up or down as they develop.
Note that RTCI tracks a sample using the numbers provided by 570 agencies. However, the relative proportions of the sample are said to track within 2% of the proportions of FBI numbers in the Uniform Crime Report, lending lots of credibility to the numbers.
According to RTCI, as of October 2025, the latest numbers available show the 12-month running average of violent crime has dropped 14% since June 2022, when SCOTUS ruled in the Bruen case. Even more interesting, murders dropped 39% since the ruling, which prompted anti-gun doom and gloom predictions.
Of course, cause and effect are much more difficult to determine than simply looking at some numbers. While we can’t say for sure the increase in concealed carry since the Bruen ruling has caused the reduction in violent crime and murders, we can certainly determine that the increase didn’t cause crime to go up, like the anti-gun advocates claimed—another victory for the principle of more guns, less crime.
![[SHOT 2026] Polished Blued SA-35 9mm from Springfield](https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/20260121_100506.jpg)
POTUS DJT gave democRats a brand new ball to chase. For now their beloved Gun Control is on the back burner….
https://youtube.com/shorts/TBz4CnsBK84?si=3O0HgoWRScVNIaY8
dacian & miner49, your sisters?
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
We already know that “crime statistics” are being manipulated by politicians and agencies, and crimes are subject to non-reporting. All the data in the article is therefore insufficient to actually “prove’ anything; GIGO. And, the article even states that data is being approximated, then compared to a “standard” that itself is questionable (FBI).
Declaring that “crime rates/data” have been reduces solely (or even majorly) as a result of “Bruen” is questionable. In essence, it is impossible to “control” all the possible variables. The same would be true if “crime data” showed an increase after “Bruen” is overturned.
This is all kinda like “proving” that total gun confiscation resulted in fewer cases of suicide.
“Declaring that ‘crime rates/data’ have been reduces solely (or even majorly) as a result of ‘Bruen’ is questionable.”
Its not saying crime rates fell “as a result of ‘Bruen'”.
Its saying that crime rates fell AFTER Bruen.
Although their ‘metrics’ source choice is different, the same decline-trend is observed overall in other leading metrics sources as well, and even from ‘government’ sources at federal and state level, +/- ~2%. So the article metric sources, and ‘interpretation’, are most likely (and is) ‘representative-accurate’ as a trend that crime rates did, overall, indeed fall after Bruen. So the article choice of their metrics source was reasonably chosen (considering a consolidated public source) for a trend representation and is ‘representative-accurate’.
Declined in the areas that actually report to standard. No promises for the the ones that stopped after bail reform but the crime victim survey can help fill in some gaps.
“Its saying that crime rates fell AFTER Bruen.”
The implication in the generally accepted understanding of using an event as a demarcation is that the event precipitated the recorded result/statistic. Else, why not just use a calendar date of no particular importance?
“After Bruen”, and “After June 23, 2022” do not imply the same thing.
Seems that the anti-gun world says the science of statistics is invalid, but facts are in the numbers. As more CITIZENS are armed the statistics prove that criminals don’t want to be shot. Most criminals want you money and your valuables and with more CITIZENS exercising their rights those statistics say the the criminal has a higher risk then under strict gun control.
I don’t carry often, but I practice regularly. I would like to avoid killing anyone, but, if some criminal gives me no choice, I want to NOT BE A VICTIM.
It is not prudent to ascribe statisticians as holding some sort of magical power that makes all statistics indisputably valid, which includes the establishment of a pure system of providing truly accurate “data”. Given that the DC cops admitted to intentional distortion of crime statistics, those reported data points cannot thus be believed in trying to associate overall crime reduction to be absolutely ascribed to one singular event.
The study of statistics is flawed by the providers of the data. Whenever polled by political surveys (heck any kind of survey) I intentionally provide inaccurate responses (and I don’t propose to believe myself unique). Statistics are not truth, but what provider say is truth.
In order to have a hope of “proving” that Bruen is the sole source of lower recorded crime data, one must legitimately eliminate any and all other possible influences. Which pushes us into the conundrum of “unknown unknowns”.
First the majority of “gun violence” that is thrown around without clarification narrow suicides. Should we confiscate all guns to decrease suicides? If someone had decided to commit suicide to pint of shooting themselves they will find another way. If you choose to be the guy standing next to his female loved one holding het hand and telling her it’ll be ok , as her face is reconstructed, collapsed lunges from fracture ribs be resolved with cheat tubes, her spleen being removed because fractured from beating and having her anus and vagina reconstructed to separate them….thats your choice. It’s my choice to be able to prevent that from happening to my loved ones . You can tell your wife, GF, or daughter you may have saved someone from suicide so it was all worth it. Ive seen it way too many times. Anyone making the choice for themselves and loved ones to be prey isn’t my business. It’s my business not to be prey.
Criminals do not fear laws.
Criminals fear a gun stuck up their ass.
As much as Gun Control loving democRats and their useful idiots try to spin it…The Second Amendment has zip, nada, nothing to do with the Criminal Misuse of firearms, bricks, bats, knives, fists, feet, vehicles, etc.
Truth is History Confirms Gun Control is the best pal Racism, Slavery and Genocide ever had. Anyone who thinks the History of Gun Control does not matter today needs to take up knitting.
guns enable real humans to defend themselves from pedocrat-thugs