I am a big believer in transparency. Each individual needs privacy from unconstitutional government intrusion—this especially includes what guns a law-abiding American citizen might own—but an association of freedom-loving citizens must be transparent.
This openness does not just include the NRA’s accounting, the programs and services we offer, and the many legislative and legal battles we are engaging in on your behalf, though those are all critical to the defense of your liberty.
We also must be wide open about the NRA’s fundamental role in society. We are an association of armed citizens. We’ve taken on the constitutionally protected responsibility of gun ownership. America’s lawfully armed citizens do live up to this responsibility—we are some of the most law-abiding citizens in the land of the free and home of the brave—but there are many in the legacy media and in politics who ignore these facts as they disparage us and our freedom. They want to convince the tens of millions of gun owners who are not members that we have a negative impact on society.
This is the opposite of the truth. First of all, have you ever seen a truly unhappy person at a gun range or at an NRA competition or event? I have seen more than a few people pause to settle their breathing or to focus before the next clay bird comes or a timer goes off. I have watched people help each other hone their shooting skills. I have also witnessed and have taken part in a lot of camaraderie, but I have never seen a truly unhappy person at an NRA event or range.
This is because our freedom is an empowering and joyful thing. You likely won’t hear that from certain media outlets, but it is visibly true. Anecdotally, I have even been told that crime goes down in host cities when the NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits comes to town—if the tens of thousands of gun owners who attend these events somehow caused spikes in crime, which is what the anti-gun rhetoric would have us believe, we’d certainly see media reports about that.
Our freedom is clearly not a negative for society. Indeed, though members of gun-control groups would rather not admit it, the murder rate looks like it is hitting an historic low as President Donald Trump helps bring law and order to our cities and as Americans continue to buy about 15 million guns per year.
The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) projected that the murder rate in the U.S. likely fell to about 4.0 per 100,000 residents in 2025. This is a preliminary report from the CCJ—as this was going to print, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had yet to finish compiling final figures for 2025. If accurate, however, it would mean that 2025 had the lowest per-capita murder rate since reliable national data began to be compiled around 1900. It would also represent the largest single-year drop in the murder rate ever observed.
Now, it is difficult to compare data from different periods, so, whatever the official numbers say, we won’t be able to definitively say it is the lowest it has ever been going back 125 years; nevertheless, it is clear that the rate has fallen as gun ownership in America has continued to climb and as Trump has closed the southern border and has deported criminals the Biden administration let in.
To see this another way, consider Mexico. The Mexican government, which is hardly the most trustworthy source, reported a national homicide rate of 17.5 murders per 100,000 people for 2025. This is more than four times the murder rate in the U.S., yet Mexico has strict gun bans and other controls and there are only two stores in the entire country where citizens can legally purchase firearms.
This is worth mentioning because too many people believe the mainstream-media lie that America’s lawful gun culture is a cause of crimes. This is simply not true. Armed citizens actually prevent a lot of crimes—citizens reported using guns to defend themselves 1.67 million times per year, according to the 2021 National Firearms Survey.
If the media were more honest, everyone would view the NRA as a group of upstanding Americans—in classic Western films, we’d be wearing the white hats. We stand for freedom, law and order, and individual empowerment.
You know this, of course, but we need to talk about this. We need to get the tens of millions of Americans who own guns to sign up for memberships at NRA.org. We need NRA members to buy memberships for their family members and to make sure that our children, friends, and more know how impactful this association has been in preserving our freedom. We need more Americans to stand together for this critical constitutionally protected right as we move toward the midterm elections this November.
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