If the gun-control Left is to be believed, then the murder rate in the U.S. should be going up, up, up; after all, gun sales and ownership rates have been rising for the last few decades and the anti-gun groups claim that gun ownership is the cause of violent crime.
This, of course, is nonsense. No metric shows that more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens increases crime. But, as crime is a complex topic, for answers we reached out to John Lott for this episode of The Armed Citizen Podcast. Lott, of course, is the author of the 1998 classic More Guns, Less Crime and many other books, as well the founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
“I think it’s pretty clear we hit historic lows [for the murder rate],” said Lott. “You know, it looks roughly that there was a little bit over a 20 percent drop in murder rates last year. In 2024, it was about five per 100,000. And it looks like there’s a good chance we’ll be below four per 100,000. You know, 3.9 something. The lowest previous murder rate ever recorded in U.S. history was 4.5 per 100,000.
“What people really need to appreciate is the change this represents over what was happening during the Biden years,” said Lott. “The best measure we have of crime is from the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey, which measures total crime. Media normally only focuses on reported crimes to police from the FBI, but only about 43 percent of violent crime, and about 30 percent of property crimes, are reported to the police. If you look at the measure of total violent crime, total felony violent crime increased by 59 percent during the Biden administration. That’s the largest percentage increase that we’ve ever seen. And my guess is when the final data comes out for 2025, which will be out in September, we’re going to see a really huge drop in overall violent crime as well as murder rates this last year.”
This is completely counter to the narrative the gun-control groups promote—and that many in the mainstream media tout—so, I asked, “But John, this can’t be possible because gun sales have been going up and up. The number of people with firearms has gone up and up. Concealed carry permits, in the states where they still keep track of them, not constitutional-carry states, has gone up and up. So, how could this possibly be the case when a lot more people have guns and the media always tells us that means murder rates go up?”
“Yeah, it’s a real mystery,” said Lott, sarcastically. “Who could figure it out? Maybe somebody ought to write a book on that. But, you know, I think there are lots of things that have affected crime this last year. It’s not rocket science. If you want to reduce crime, you have to make it riskier for criminals to commit crime. And you can do that with higher arrest rates, higher conviction rates, longer prison terms, but also by allowing people to be able to defend themselves. And you look at some place like Washington, D.C., where Trump federalized law enforcement. He basically did all those things. He put more boots on the ground in terms of arresting people. Judge Jeanine Pirro, who is the U.S. attorney there, is in charge of prosecuting crimes by adults. She’s been a huge change from the Biden administration. D.C. is unique in terms of the U.S. attorney there is responsible for prosecuting crimes for adults as compared to other places in the U.S. During the Biden administration, the Democratic U.S. attorney there in 2022 refused to prosecute about two-thirds of arrests. In 2023, he refused to prosecute something like 56 percent of arrests. Obviously, Pirro is the opposite.
“But on top of that, Trump did other things. It was taking eight months to go and get a concealed-carry permit in D.C. prior to the Trump administration. They put pressure on D.C. and basically got it down to two weeks for going and doing a permit.”
Perhaps the biggest change of all, noted Lott, is that “now the focus is on the criminals. Which is where it should be ... . Police and law enforcement are very important, but allowing people to defend themselves is critical.”
