There has been a certain amount of anticipation while the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) analyzed the available crime data for last year. The speculation among many was that the report would be, not just good news, but record-setting good news.
On August 14, the FBI released the numbers, and they were worth the wait.
According to the Bureau, from 2024 to 2025, America saw “the largest year-to-year decline in violent crime rates since FBI estimations began in 1936.” Murder declined 18.1%, rape was down 7.6%, aggravated assault dropped 7.2%, and robbery came down 18.5%. The Bureau’s release noted that the 2025 murder rate tied the years 1955 and 1956 for the lowest recorded rate.
These numbers are clearly worth celebrating.
Unless, of course, you are an anti-gun extremist who relies on exploiting violent crime to promote your attacks on the Second Amendment.
A week after the release of the FBI report, none of the major anti-gun organizations appear to have anything to say about what any rational individual would call either great news or at least a major story in public safety.
The sections of their websites for “news” or “press releases” were strangely silent about the FBI report while this article was being written. There were plenty of hysterical, inaccurate rants predicting doom-and-gloom over recent court rulings that upheld the Second Amendment and efforts to realign federal policies to respect the right to keep and bear arms. Some of these anti-gun claims were so preposterous that they even provoked a response from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to set the record straight.
But “gun safety advocates” uncharacteristically had nothing to say about the good news of falling violent crime.
Even The Trace, the anti-gun “media” outlet that claims to “use the power of journalism to improve public understanding, increase accountability, and identify solutions that can lead to safer homes and communities for all Americans,” appeared at a loss for words. Of course, considering this “media” outlet is really little more than billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun propaganda mill, that’s not terribly surprising.
After all, what could they say? For years, all of these anti-gun activists have falsely claimed that more guns in the hands of ordinary Americans means more crime. Their answer has always been to eviscerate the Second Amendment.
But there are currently more guns owned by more law-abiding citizens than ever in the history of this great nation. And since the historic Supreme Court rulings in Heller, McDonald, Bruen, and Wolford—combined with the dramatic expansion of Constitutional Carry laws into 29 states over the last few decades—it could be easily argued that the Second Amendment and the right to arms is more practiced and publicly accepted in America than anyone alive today can recall.
Meanwhile, the supposedly game-changing rules the Biden-Harris administration implemented to enforce the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, as well as ATF’s much ballyhooed “zero tolerance” inspection regime for gun dealers, were all rendered dead letters by subsequent court decisions and ATF administration actions. Certainly, they cannot be credited. Indeed, the drop coincided with the first year of the most pro-gun presidential administration of NRA-ILA’s 51-year history.
We previously reported on what moist anticipated would be good news from the FBI, and those early expectations have largely been met. Unfortunately, we could also have reliably predicted that declining crime would not deter anti-gun extremists from continuing to push their anti-freedom agenda. They will simply ignore the good news, exploit horrific but rare tragedies, and keep pushing to ban your guns.
The obvious takeaway is that it has never been about violent crime for them. It is all about restricting your freedom.
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