By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Buried deep in a lengthy article posted by The Trace last week is a passage which may rock the gun prohibition movement to its core, while a leading national grassroots gun rights organization has quickly determined the entire report shows there is no necessity for more gun control.
The article quoted Cassandra Crifasi, co-director of Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins. She told the publication, “There’s a really big misconception that our country is run rampant with gun violence, and it’s increasing and everywhere is so dangerous. Overall crime has been trending down for a long time. We saw some places spike during Covid but we’re seeing recovery from those spikes.”
Translation: more guns in private hands has not resulted in the urban bloodbath scenario anti-gunners had been predicting every time a state adopted concealed carry, and subsequently when states began adopting “Constitutional (permitless) Carry” laws.
The article, headlined “A Trace Analysis of 150 U.S. Cities Shows One of the Greatest Drops in Gun Violence — Ever”carries an eyebrow-raising sub-head explaining, how the downward trend “cuts across red and blue cities and states in every region of the country.” Writer Olga Pierce notes how gun-related violence is on the decline in a surprising manner.
What isn’t said in the article, but what is noted by Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the 650,000-member Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), is that this dramatic reduction in so-called “gun violence”—a term created by the gun control movement ostensibly in an effort to demonize firearms—has occurred at the same time U.S. citizens have been buying more guns, and there are actually more gun owners.
“The only logical conclusion we can draw from this,” he said, “is that America doesn’t need any more gun control laws, and common sense suggests we can get along with even fewer restrictions.”
Back in January, the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported that during the years from 2020 to 2024, an estimated 26.2 million first time gun owners joined the ranks of armed citizens.
“That’s not a number to scoff at because it is more than the population of the state of Florida,” wrote NSSF’s Larry Keane at the time. “In fact, that’s more than the populations of America’s Top 10 largest cities combined.”
But The Trace article dealt with declining numbers in 150 American cities. And Gottlieb was pleasantly surprised to see such a candid article in any publication, much less one backed by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, founder of Everytown for Gun Safety.
“No doubt unintentionally,” Gottlieb observed, “The Trace article has literally put the lie to anti-gun propaganda which has festered for decades, that more law-abiding citizens carrying guns would result in widespread mayhem, more bloodshed and increased homicides. Yet, by its own admission, The Trace just told America—including anti-gunners on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures from coast to coast—their campaign of hysteria was, at a minimum, misguided and loaded with misinformation.”
As noted by Keane in his January article, “That’s right – approximately 26.2 million law-abiding Americans, from all different races, genders, backgrounds, religions and ethnicities, went to their local firearm retailer and bought a gun for the first time between 2020 and today. What’s more is it’s clear these first-time buyers aren’t just paying the cashier and walking out with a new piece of hardware. They’re showing an interest in getting trained and educated to be safe, responsible firearm owners.”
It’s the sort of revelation which makes the gun prohibition lobby squirm.
And, it opens up the door for a lot of questions, such as, “How can gun control proponents continue demanding more restrictive laws when their own flagship publication acknowledges a dramatic reduction in violent, gun-related crime, at a time when millions of law-abiding citizens are legally-armed, and they’re not harming anyone?”
As noted at AmmoLand News, anti-gunners have just obliterated one of their greatest myths.
“For a couple of generations,” CCRKBA’s Gottlieb noted, “we have seen one gun control myth after another used as excuses to restrict our Second Amendment rights. Yet here we are, at a time when those rights are being gradually restored, when states have adopted Constitutional Carry laws, more people own guns and more people are legally carrying them for personal protection, and The Trace acknowledges violent crime involving guns is declining. Looks like we’ve been right all along, and the anti-gun media essentially just admitted it.”
