We’ve Been Running a Huge, Real-World Experiment in the Expansion of Carrying Guns in America…Here Are the Results

The United States is currently experiencing what is likely to be a record-low in homicide, which has occurred at the same time as a massive expansion in firearm carry rights across the country. I have previously written
about how those with carry permits almost never commit crime. State-level data proves it, and even gun-skeptical research organizations have recognized that “evidence generally shows that, as a group, [carry permit] license holders are particularly law abiding and rarely are convicted for violent crimes.”

Yet this irrefutable data didn’t stop the usual antigun suspects from predicting doom when the Supreme Court first issued its ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022. There, the Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s 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.

For example, the then-Chief Counsel of Brady, Jonathan Lowy, said that Bruen “is 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.” John Feinblatt, President of Everytown for Gun Safety, said the Supreme Court chose “to put our communities in even greater danger with gun violence on the rise across the country.” Giffords claimed the ruling would “escalate gun violence,” “spur unlawful militia activity,” “embolden those inclined to vigilante justice,” “increase violence at protests,” and cause “more domestic violence and hate crimes.”

Antigun politicians made similar breathless predictions. Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey claimed Bruen was a dangerous decision that “will make America a less safe country.” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said it “severely undermines public safety not just in New York City, but around the country.” Senator Alex Padilla of California put it more bluntly: “Today’s decision will make our communities less safe, plain and simple.”

Countless other examples abound. I encourage you to follow @2Aupdates if you want to constantly be reminded of all these claims.

We all make incorrect predictions from time to time, but the degree to which opponents of the Second Amendment were wrong is simply astounding.

Not only has homicide not risen, it has fallen to record lows. 2025 may have been our best year for intentional homicide ever.

As the Council on Criminal Justice explained:

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.

The antigun predictions weren’t just wrong, they were hilariously wrong. They said America would turn into the “Wild West” and the streets would be awash in blood from the regular gunfighting we’d all be engaged in.

None of that happened.

Turning to firearm-related homicide in particular, Bruen didn’t 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:

The Bruen ruling 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’t yet available from the CDC, by all accounts 2025 was even lower still.

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.

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

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 Bruen. I have highlighted some of those cities in the chart here:

This pattern persists on a state-by-state level, too. Since 2022 and Bruen, there are two broad categories of carry rights expansion:

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 Bruen. This category includes California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island.
2. Shall-issue states that adopted permitless “constitutional” carry, i.e., you don’t even need a permit to carry as long as you can lawfully possess a firearm. States in this category include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Carolina.

Collectively, I will refer to these 16 states as the “rights-expanding states.”

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 The Facts Are Clear: Permitless Carry will Make Florida Less Safe.

Using the CDC’s WONDER tool, 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:

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.

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%. And Florida, which Giffords confidently and loudly asserted would be less safe thanks to constitutional carry, was also down 28% in firearm-related homicide.

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.

I won’t claim that carry rights expansion caused the national decline in homicide. I don’t have sufficient evidence for that. I do believe it’s at least plausible that news coverage of the Bruen ruling 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’t prove it. Experts in the field continue to debate what has caused the national decline in homicide, and it may be a long time before there’s any scholarly consensus.

Whatever the cause, its existence definitely shatters the fear-mongering post-Bruen claims of the antigun groups and the politicians they support.

This has been a massive, real-world test of the “more legal carry = more gun violence” hypothesis the gun control advocates peddle. They explicitly and loudly predicted disaster. The data has proved them wrong in spectacular fashion.

 

Kostas Moros is Director of Legal Research and Education for the Second Amendment Foundation. This post was adapted by SNW from an article posted at X.