The news cycle this week offered an interesting juxtaposition: lawmakers and local officials in Washington state scrambled to leverage a crisis to justify their policy choices after another horrific shooting in Seattle that was not in any way prevented by the laundry list of gun control measures passed in Olympia in recent years, while, in the same week, U.S. News and World Report updated its rankings of the safest states in America finding that New Hampshire is the safest of all for the third year in a row.
New Hampshire Leads the Nation in Public Safety Again
In New Hampshire, Gov. Kelly Ayotte was quick to take to the airwaves and social media praising law enforcement and first responders. However, it is impossible not to take notice of the fact that New Hampshire is among the freest and most pro-gun rights states in the nation and is where the rate of gun ownership is among the highest in the nation. If there were any correlation between either the presence or absence of gun control and public safety or the rate of civilian ownership of firearms and public safety, New Hampshire would not be some outlier that a social scientist could simply ignore. New Hampshire would be statistically impossible. The Granite State isn’t merely oddly lower than a statistical model would predict. It is the safest state in the nation.
According to published FBI statistics, New Hampshire has the lowest murder rate in the nation and is not even close to second place.
Crime in Anti-Gun Rights States Persists
On the opposite coast, an apparent gang-related shooting occurred at the Space Needle in Seattle on July 27, carried out by a 15-year-old, using an unserialized firearm that he presumably acquired without obtaining a permit to purchase, with “large-capacity magazines,” and a “machine gun conversion device” in a “gun-free zone.” Washington state lawmakers banned every single aspect of the conduct and hardware used in this assault. Despite the mountain of layers of gun control that the assailant completely disregarded, three victims lost their lives.
Rather than reaching a moment of self-reflection, local officials and lawmakers and the media instead chose to twist the facts and claim the firearm used in this attack was 3-D printed. Why? Because on March 18, Gov. Bob Ferguson added to the pile of “ghost gun” legislation in the state and signed HB 2320 into law, which makes it illegal to use 3-D printers to manufacture firearm receivers or firearm parts. Rather than acknowledge how feckless the entire gun control regime in Washington is at preventing these types of tragedies, lawmakers instead would cry, “If only we had acted sooner!” Facts be damned.
Granite State lawmakers have consistently made the policy choice to protect both the right to keep and bear arms and the right to self-defense, while encouraging law enforcement to, well, simply put, enforce the law. Seattle spent half a decade defunding the police, and despite some budgetary reversals in 2025, Seattle PD remains significantly underfunded and understaffed compared to its pre-2020 levels. Over the last decade, Seattle actively chose to not enforce the law or actively protect its residents, and Olympia chose to blame and punish peaceable people for the lawlessness that would inevitably follow these policy choices.
In comparison, Granite Staters continue to enjoy freedom and public safety, with one of the lowest tax burdens in the U.S. and the lowest poverty rate in the U.S…. to the absolute bewilderment of blue state lawmakers across America. The Granite State is the Juxtaposition State.
