On June 23, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued a decision in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen. Prior to the Bruen decision, Courts of Appeal in Progressive-dominated Circuits, such as the Ninth and Second circuits, had refused to honor Second Amendment precedent established in the Heller and McDonald decisions. Bruen admonished the lower courts for creating a procedure to treat the Second Amendment as a second-class right. Bruen created a simple test to determine if a statute was allowed by the Second Amendment.
The Bruen case clarified that “bear” in the “right to keep and bear arms” protected the right to be armed in public places with arms that can be carried by or on a person. The limitations to this right were stated to be the same limitations as they were understood by the public in 1791 when the Bill of Rights was ratified. Anti-Second Amendment pundits predicted more violent crime and homicides.
As of the latest numbers from October 2025, the 12-month running average of violent crime has dropped 14% since June 2022. The drop in murders is even more pronounced at 39%. The numbers are from the tools provided by the Real Time Crime Index.
The index does not track all crime. It tracks a sample using the numbers provided by 570 agencies. The relative proportions of the sample are said to track within 2% of the proportions of FBI numbers in the Uniform Crime Reports. Agreement to within 2% of overall proportions, in this sort of measurement, is quite good. If the Real Time Crime Index shows a rise or fall in crime numbers, it essentially mimics what is happening in the FBI numbers. The 570 reporting agencies cover over half of the crimes reported in the United States.
After the initial wave of anti-Second Amendment propaganda subsided, approval of the Bruen decision returned to about 2/3 of the respondents. The Second Amendment is popular in the United States of America.
The drop in violent crime and in homicides is coincident with the implementation of the Bruen decision. It started before President Trump was elected to his second term. It is also coincident with the election of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, which placed some restraint on the excesses of the Biden administration. 2022 is also coincident with a retreat from some of the anti-police and pro-criminal policies pushed by what became known as “Soros” prosecutors, such as Kimberly Gardner in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Cause and effect are not easy to determine. A return to the rule of law is clearly effective in reducing crime. The far-left notion of police as the cause, rather than the cure for crime, has not held up in real-world situations. It cannot be proven that the Bruen decision was instrumental in reducing violent crime and homicides. The fact that violent crime and homicides fell after the Bruen decision makes it unlikely that the restoration of rights protected by the Second Amendment increases violent crime.
It is more likely that the restoration of rights protected by the Second Amendment is a contributor to lower violent crime and homicide rates.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
To trust data you have to trust the people who compile the data. I don’t know who came up with this data, but I do know that the news reports of shootings I have read and the level of shootings I know of in my area are not down; they are up. I don’t trust other’s data. I think these data are usually sought to reinforce people’s beliefs about what they already think. I never see someone say that they were anti-gun but now that they see the data they are pro-gun. The data can not change the Constitution. The… Read more »
SCROTUS has failed us. The WHOLE of govt. is CORRUPT and for themselves, NOT for The PeopIe.
Ummm…the other way to look at that chart is in light of the COVID-19 spike and then crime fell again.
An armed society is a polite society. Yup, there are those bad apples who would cause trouble and worse but they have always been there. The difference is the good guy can and will defend himself — and others. Not everyone carries in the open so the bad guy has to either pick his targets more carefully or he will die of natural causes — natural to his line of work. The only people who oppose the armed American citizen are the bad guys; criminals; murderers, robbers, cartel operators, drug dealers, corrupt/communist politicians, judges, enforcement, lawyers, those poor uneducated or… Read more »
The realization by evildoers that their intended victims might well be armed in accordance with the law actually deterring said evildoers from doing evil? Who’da thunk it?
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. . . This is misleading Democrat type tactics, we need to be better than them. . . This graph does not show the bruen decision had anything to do with crime falling. Crime was already declining before Covid-19 hit. Covid-19 and the government response increased criminal activity and violent crime, and now that it is over, violent crime has returned to pre-covid era rates and continues on the same decline. Looking at a few other sources, violent crime was significantly lower in 2014 than in 2019 and 2025. No Bruen Decision. The Graph starts in… Read more »
Happy New Year to everyone, at Ammoland. Welcome to a chance to change for the better. Soc. Sec. increase kicks in, new FIT deductions for real Americans kick in, lower FIT withholding kicks in, gasoline is down to $1.99.
And for my fellow Texans: On this day in 1863, Confederate forces under the command of Maj. Gen. John Bankhead Magruder launched an attack on Galveston, which Union forces had captured in October 1862. Galveston remained under Confederate control for the duration of the war.