In Tucson this week, nine people were struck by gunfire in what authorities describe as a targeted attack, and the suspect was quickly neutralized by responding officers before being taken into custody. The mayor’s immediate pivot to “stronger gun laws” follows the familiar script: blame the tool, ignore the shooter’s criminal history, and sidestep the fact that Arizona’s shall-issue permitting and constitutional-carry framework already place legal firearms in the hands of millions of law-abiding residents who commit virtually none of the state’s violent crime. Data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports and Arizona’s own Department of Public Safety show that the overwhelming majority of gun violence in the state is committed by prohibited persons—felons, gang members, and repeat offenders—yet the political reflex remains to restrict the rights of the 99-plus percent who follow the law.

For the 2A community the takeaway is straightforward: every high-profile incident is leveraged to expand the regulatory state even when existing prohibitions on violent criminals acquiring guns were already ignored. Tucson’s numbers track national trends documented by the Bureau of Justice Statistics—most shootings occur in narrow geographic pockets with elevated rates of prior felony convictions and active warrants—yet mayors rarely call for prosecuting straw purchasers, enforcing existing background-check failures, or prioritizing swift removal of armed felons from the streets. Instead, the narrative pushes magazine bans, “assault weapon” restrictions, and expanded permitting that disproportionately burden the very citizens who rely on firearms for self-defense in high-crime neighborhoods.

The longer-term implication is that policy built on emotional reaction rather than offender-focused enforcement will continue to leave law-abiding gun owners disarmed while violent actors remain undeterred; the data consistently show that jurisdictions emphasizing prosecution of prohibited possessors and swift adjudication of violent cases achieve measurable drops in shootings, whereas symbolic restrictions on legal ownership correlate with little or no reduction in criminal misuse.