Oregon gun store counter assault rifle AR-15
Firearms are displayed at a gun shop in Salem, Ore. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky, File)

Several of the nation’s most ardent gun control activist governors and mayors of the largest metropolitans are staring down a divergent reality. They continue to stick with publicizing increasing gun control restrictions on law-abiding citizens as crime is going down in many – though not all – major cities, while gun sales continue to increase at “new normal” historically high rates.

The tired scare tactic of warning “more guns means more crime” is crumbling apart as millions of law-abiding Americans are awakening to what it means to be a lawful and responsible gun owner. The streak of more than one million NSSF-adjusted FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verifications processed for the purchase of a firearm hit 55 months in February 2024.

Those firearm sales figures include significant increases in gun ownership in some of the country’s bluest states and cities. In those same areas, crime has been rampant over the past several years as politicians embraced “Defund the Police” efforts, bail reform policies and going soft on criminals.

The rest of the law-abiding population has pushed back in a resounding way.

Eyes on the Big Apple

One city where the divergent reality is most prominently seen today is New York City. Perhaps no city has seen more dissatisfied citizens about their feeling toward public safety than the Big Apple. It was a major factor under former accidental Mayor Bill de Blasio and continues under Mayor Eric Adams. That includes a stretch in 2022 where 70 percent of New York City residents felt unsafe.

That figure hasn’t improved much in the past year. The New York Times reported on a new poll showing that only 37 percent of city residents felt satisfied with the level of safety in their neighborhood. The same poll found that only half of residents admitted they planned to stay in the city past 2028.

“People are fed up with the quality of life. There’s a general sense of lawlessness. You go into the CVS and there’s shoplifting. People’s cars get vandalized,” Queens Councilman Robert Holden told The New York Post about the polling.

Despite residents still feeling unsafe in their city – particularly while New Yorkers still face spikes in crime on the city’s subway – two trends have overlapped to demonstrate why crime is actually falling a bit in New York City from the recent highs over the past few years: increases in gun ownership and law enforcement getting tough on criminals.

In New York City, the rampant crime of the past several years, as well as more recent events including rises in antisemitism, have contributed to large numbers of new law-abiding gun owners in the city. Women, African Americans, Jewish residents and even a collection of hundreds of the city’s bodega owners have all taken the Second Amendment into their own hands to purchase firearms. It’s also led to a decrease in crime so far compared to last year.

“Anyone that’s out there looking to rob us, hurt us, kill us – beware,” Fernando Mateo, a spokesperson for the United Bodegas of America recently said. “You may be walking into the wrong bodega because now we have the same firepower you have.”

All told, NSSF-adjusted FBI NICS verifications for the purchase of a firearm in New York have totaled nearly 1.6 million. That’s a lot of new, empowered New Yorkers taking their personal safety into their own hands and not relying on delayed or understaffed law enforcement. Criminals are taking note.

Busting Bad Guys 

In addition to the massive number of new gun owners in the Big Apple, the falling crime rate is likely due to another logical effort that has nothing to do with placing more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners. Instead, it turns out that going after and getting tough on criminals who break the law has real, positive impacts on the city.

The Gothamist reported on a new survey released by the mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and the New York Police Department that highlighted new information about what types of illegal guns police are seizing and where. The report breaks down more than 6,200 firearms that police seized between July 2020 and December 2021.

“About a third of [the seized firearms] had been used in a crime and about two-thirds had not. The guns that had not been used in a crime included those seized from people who didn’t have a license to possess a firearm, and weapons that people voluntarily turned over to law enforcement at gun buybacks,” the report stated. It should be noted that illegally possessing a firearm is, in fact, a crime.

The report also demonstrated that most of the seized firearms connected to a crime came from police precincts with high crime rates, reinforcing that police know where violent criminals are, that they are using and possessing illegal firearms and that those areas deserve the most attention.

Lastly, the crime report reinforced that illegally possessed handguns are, by far, the most commonly used firearm when a crime is committed. More than 70 percent of all the guns seized were handguns, with only eight percent being either a rifle or shotgun. When the report segments those guns out further to look at the “crime guns” the numbers are even more telling. More than 80 percent of recovered firearms were handguns with only three percent being a long gun.

This data tracks fairly closely with what the firearm industry has said for years: that the overwhelming majority of firearms used in crime are illegally obtained handguns and that, also, Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs), which there are more than 28 million in circulation, are seldom used in a crime.

Not an Outlier 

While crime is actually staying high in Washington, D.C., even though the city already implements nearly every gun control law imaginable, and a few other major cities that had notoriously soft-on-crime prosecutors or that severely cut police budgets, New York City isn’t an outlier. Across the country in major cities crime seems to be trending downward in the right direction.

Not all major cities can point towards new gun restrictions or gun control laws as the reason behind the decrease. But, in every state – including many of the major cities which often have Left-leaning, gun control supportive mayors – firearm sales have kept up at a blistering pace.

With more law-abiding gun owners, and with more states like Louisiana and South Carolina opting for permitless carry, it’s abundantly clear criminals have recognized they are facing more empowered and confident residents that won’t be such easy targets as victims anymore.

 

—By Matt Manda, Courtesy NSSF

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19 COMMENTS

  1. Hello! These people don’t give a flying f* about crime! They want to disarm us so, ultimately, they can steal our stuff and murder us! Quit repeating their lies and start writing the truth!

  2. “as crime is going down in many – though not all – major cities, while gun sales continue to increase at “new normal” historically high rates.”

    “gun sales continue to increase at ‘new normal’ historically high rates” is why “crime is going down in many – though not all – major cities” because “criminals have recognized they are facing more empowered and confident residents that won’t be such easy targets as victims anymore.”

    and as soon as the rest of the victims in the “though not all – major cities” stop being oppressed to keep them from having guns and exercising their constitutional right unburdened the criminals there will recognize “they are facing more empowered and confident residents that won’t be such easy targets as victims anymore.”

  3. Weapons control, it started long before guns, has never been about crime. Never.

    Our modern fascists want total control of us. Period.

  4. It never fails…With the criminal misuse of firearms here comes Gun Control not to execute the criminal but to execute The Second Amendment. A horrendous criminal act is nothing more than a vehicle Gun Control zealots use to justify civilian disarmament. Criminals are what Gun Control zealots use to dupe the Gun Control History illiterate public into blindly supporting Gun Control and it works. But never mind telling Gun Control History illiterates the Gun Control they march for is Confirmed by History to be Deeply Rooted in Racism and Genocide…That information wouldn’t give a Gun Control marcher a second thought so I have been told by the no counts on this forum.
    https://youtube.com/watch?v=m-l7TO01-Sg&feature=shared

    • nope, she had years to learn how she violated her oath to the constitution, the people she swore to serve when she joined the military and congress.
      she is too late

  8. Meanwhile, some states are doubling down. In his final attack on gun owners before being term-limited out of the Legislature, Senator Portantino (a reliable gun banner if ever there was one), has proposed that all California gun owners be required to ANNUALLY register their guns, and yes, that includes handguns for which there is a record of purchase with the Cal DOJ created at the time of purchase since 2000, and long guns since 2013. The scuttlebutt is that they are talking about a fee of $250 PER FIREARM the first year, and $150 per firearm every year thereafter, allegedly for the cost of maintaining the system (as if anyone believes them).

    I for one don’t have that kind of money to spend every year. In fact, the cost is more than my annual property taxes…This is an outright gun ban as people are forced to sell their guns in order to be able to eat.

  9. “Anti-Gun Governors & Mayors Are Learning More Guns Do Not Necessarily Mean More Crime”

    These entities may be seeing indications that more guns do not mean more crime, but those same entities are learning nothing.

  11. Weirdness is as weirdness does.
    A certain individual fcked with somebody they shouldn’t have fucked with and when another individual told a certain individual not to fck with an individual and the certain individual turns the other individual into the poleece for threatening the certain individual with a knife then all the city cops wave at the threatening individual in a friendly manner that supposedly threatened an individual with a knife,,, it makes a person wonder.
    Maybe the Cops are getting tired of the BS certain individuals too?

  12. The article contradicts the headline and the basis of the article rests on two unproven assumptions (they’re “learning” LOL! and that crime in cities is going down).

    Didn’t TTAG run an article in the not-so-distant past about how they’re buggering the reporting of crime?

    If things are on the upswing in NYC then why does a huge percentage of the city report that they intend to leave due to crime and taxes?

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