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The mid to late 20th century was the peak era of gun control in America. The violence and unrest of the 1960s kicked it all off with the the Gun Control Cct of 1968, the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, the Brady Law of 1993 and finally the Clinton “assault weapons” ban of 1994.
Few states allowed concealed carry in any form, while a number of western states only allowed open carry. Even Texas, despite its gun-friendly reputation, was very restrictive from the time of Reconstruction until the 1990s. Even in states that allowed open carry, it was common to face police harassment and social shunning for daring to carry.
As you can see, things began to slowly change quickly starting in the late 1980s. A wave of “shall issue” carry laws took hold in places where carry was either banned or permits were only issued to the wealthy and/or well-connected. After most states had a process where normal people could get a permit to carry a gun, the next wave of constitutional (permitless) carry began to sweep the United States. That process is ongoing today with 27 states having some form of permitless carry more still possible (Louisiana, South Carolina).
Every time anything threatened to change for the better on the map above, the story was always exactly the same. At hearings in state legislatures, the defenders of the restrictive status quo always showed up raise the alarm and claim the policy of limiting gun rights is better and more reasonable. If the legislature changed the law to give people more freedom, the warned, there would be dire consequences. Blood would run ankle-deep in the streets, fender-bender shootouts would erupt, robberies and murders would rise, and the fabric of the social order would be frayed.
Somehow, though, that never happened. There are lying statisticians who play games with the numbers, but the objective and honest ones have been able to show a rise in crime that could be attributed to letting law-abiding citizens carry firearms.
If anything, there’s good evidence that crime falls after gun control laws are relaxed. To pro-gun people, the reasons are obvious — criminals carried guns regardless of the law, and now law-abiders are carrying, too. Law-abiding gun owners engage in very little crime as a group, but the very fact that they’re armed suppresses the activities of criminals to a certain extent.
This dynamic played out again and again, yet the gun control industry never learned their lesson. Over and over, states decided to respect the right to keep and bear arms, removing carry restrictions. and the fools continue to predict more murder and mayhem. Yet it never came to pass.
When the Supreme Court told deep-blue states that they had to start issuing carry permits without applying bureaucratic discretion, the same dynamic went into overdrive. Once again, a great wave of crime was predicted. Here’s Brady’s dire predictions issued the day the Bruen decision was handed down . . .
“The court’s actions…will assuredly result in more gun violence immediately.”
If you poke around on the internet, other anti-gun groups made the same kind of prediction. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, what the gun control industry thought they knew just wasn’t so.
Recent data from the FBI (even though it’s being run by the Biden Administration now) shows, once again, that lowering the restrictions on gun ownership and carry wasn’t the disaster it was predicted to be.
According to The Hill . . .
The FBI’s annual crime report, released Monday, found that violent crime in the U.S. last year decreased while property crime is on the rise. Overall, violent crime dropped 1.7 percent, including a 6.1 percent decrease in murder and non-negligent manslaughter.
Overall, the rate of violent crime in 2022 — 380.7 per 100,000 people — is slightly below what was recorded before the pandemic in 2019 when it was 380.8 per 100,000 people. While violent crime is on a downward trend, property crime remains on the rise, with a 7.1 percent increase in 2022.
What seems fairly obvious here is that criminals are now more afraid to victimize people directly. There’s more of a chance that their victims can and will fight back.
Instead, they’ve switching to property crimes like auto theft and burglary of unattended properties. The few violent crimes that have risen are all based on getting the drop on people, including carjackings, but other forms of violent crime are below what they were even in 2019.
While it sucks to have packages stolen from your porch or your car broken into, or even to have someone steal your car from your driveway, all of those things can be replaced. We can’t replace our lives and having the ability to deter an attack on ourselves or our families — wherever we may be — is critical. So, this is definitely the trend line I’d rather be on.
The Truth About Guns