The community of gun owners is often admonished that correlation is not causation as it relates to more people carrying firearms and falling levels of crime. While that may be true, in 2022, after the Supreme Court issued its landmark Bruen decision, blue state officials blasted the message that more people carrying firearms would be a blood-in-the-streets scenario that would endanger public safety. Not only has that narrative not come true, the opposite has happened.
In June of 2022, shortly after the Bruen Supreme Court decision, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez predicted a nightmare scenario, stating, “New York’s strong gun laws have saved lives for more than a century, and the Supreme Court’s decision to open the door for millions of New Yorkers to carry a concealed weapon is a nightmare for public safety.”
Fast forward four years, and Gonzalez is singing a different tune after rolling out statistics that show a huge drop in violence. On August 4, Gonzalez stated, “Brooklyn is experiencing a genuine public safety renaissance, driven by focused enforcement, strong prosecutions, community partnership and sustained investments in preventing violence before it occurs.”
According to the borough’s statistics, beginning July 3, Brooklyn went 29 consecutive days without a homicide, surpassing the previous record of 24 days in October 2016. This year, homicides are down 37% and shooting incidents are down 16%. Brooklyn’s 22 fewer homicides account for 47% of the citywide reduction, while its 24 fewer shooting incidents account for 85% of the citywide decline.
New York’s next-door neighbor experienced the same thing. On July 1, 2022, then-New Jersey Attorney General, Matthew Platkin, predicted a similar apocalyptic scenario stating, “Make no mistake: by dramatically expanding the number of New Jersey residents who will be permitted to carry a firearm, the majority of the Court is enabling violence in our communities.”
Since Bruen, New Jersey (under the OAG) has issued over 100,000 permits to carry a concealed firearm (it publishes stats on a public-facing dashboard). In January of this year, Platkin announced that the state experienced record low shootings. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. Not only were total shootings down 28% year over year, auto thefts also dropped 9%. The state called it “historic.”
But the narrative was always more important than the statistics. In 2025, even as violence was dropping in the state, Platkin publicly promulgated the narrative that an increase in people carrying firearms results in more violence. He was criticized by both parties for this political theater during a March Senate budget committee hearing.
Likewise, on the other side of the country, California Attorney General Rob Bonta (who is currently the subject of numerous lawsuits for unconstitutional gun control measures) predicted dire outcomes in June of 2022, stating, “In the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, and with gun deaths at an all-time high, ensuring that dangerous individuals are not allowed to carry concealed firearms is more important than ever. The data is clear and the consequences are dire – more guns in more places make us less safe.”
Ironically enough, in July of 2026, Bonta’s office released new statistics that belied his prediction of carnage:
- homicides down 18.6% in 2025
- homicides also down 17.5% in the previous year
- violent crime down 10.2%
- property crime down 14.3%
- violence-related domestic calls for assistance, down
- use of force incidents, down
- juvenile arrests down 7%
- ghost gun recovery peaked in 2021 (before Bruen), and has dropped every year since
California attributes the overall drop to a long list of possible causes, from community partnerships to gun safety group advocates – just about anything other than armed, law-abiding citizens as deterrents.
Time and again, by their own numbers, blue states are experiencing drops in crime as Americans embrace their right to be armed in public. And while we’re told we cannot draw a causal link between the two things, one thing is for certain: armed Americans are not the cause of crime waves, violence, or reduced public safety.
