Johns Hopkins’ latest “public carry guide” is less a scholarly update than a greatest-hits reel of the same tired claims that gun-control advocates have recycled for decades: that shall-issue permitting somehow floods the streets with “dangerous” people, that right-to-carry laws spike violent crime, and that law-abiding carriers are one road-rage incident away from becoming mass shooters. The authors dust off discredited studies, ignore the National Research Council’s own finding of “inconclusive” evidence on RTC laws, and treat every defensive gun use as statistically invisible—despite estimates from the CDC’s own prior work suggesting hundreds of thousands to millions annually. By framing ordinary citizens exercising a constitutional right as a public-health menace, the guide recycles the old public-health model that treats gun ownership itself as the disease rather than addressing actual violent offenders.
What makes the timing noteworthy is how little the data have cooperated with the narrative. Thirty years after Florida’s pioneering shall-issue law, the twenty-nine states that now recognize constitutional carry show no uniform crime spike; several, including Texas and Georgia after permitless reforms, posted multi-year homicide declines even amid the pandemic murder surge that hit restrictive jurisdictions hardest. Meanwhile, the guide’s hand-wringing over “training” conveniently ignores that most shall-issue states already impose classroom and range requirements, while constitutional-carry states still see permit applications surge from citizens who want the extra credential for reciprocity or added legal protections. The real-world effect is that millions of Americans—disproportionately poor, urban, and minority—now carry without begging permission from local officials who historically weaponized discretion against them.
For the 2A community the takeaway is straightforward: academic institutions will keep laundering policy preferences as neutral research, but the courts and state legislatures are no longer required to treat those preferences as data. Post-Bruen, the operative question is not whether Johns Hopkins can scare legislators with regression tables; it is whether infringements on the right to bear arms are consistent with the nation’s historical tradition. The guide inadvertently underscores why that tradition matters—because the alternative is an endless loop of the same myths, endlessly repackaged, while citizens who simply want to protect themselves continue to win both in the streets and in the courts.
