We’ve Been Running a Huge, Real-World Experiment on the Expansion of Carrying Guns in America…Here Are the Results

February 21, 2026
7:25 am

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Imagine this: for decades, gun control advocates have painted a doomsday picture of concealed carry expansion—blood in the streets, Wild West shootouts at every Starbucks, a nation spiraling into chaos. Fast-forward to today, and we've just wrapped up the largest real-world experiment in American history on what happens when more law-abiding citizens can carry firearms in public. Spoiler: the results demolish their predictions. States that embraced constitutional carry—allowing permitless concealed carry for eligible adults—haven't seen spikes in violent crime. In fact, data from places like Texas, Florida, and a dozen others show stable or declining murder rates, with FBI stats revealing no correlation between carry law liberalization and rising homicides. Opponents like Everytown for Gun Safety forecasted carnage; instead, we've got empirical evidence that armed citizens deter crime more than they ignite it. Digging deeper, this isn't just cherry-picked stats—it's a longitudinal smackdown backed by researchers like John Lott and the Crime Prevention Research Center, who've tracked permit issuance exploding from 2.7 million in 1987 to over 22 million today, without the predicted bloodbath. Context matters: during the same period, urban crime waves tied to soft-on-crime policies and gang activity persisted in strict-gun-control havens like Chicago and New York, underscoring that criminals don't follow laws, but armed victims do. The clever twist? This experiment was involuntary—Supreme Court wins like Bruen (2022) forced states to reckon with the Second Amendment's plain text, stripping away may-issue gatekeeping that favored the elite. Critics' failed prophecies aren't just wrong; they're a goldmine for 2A advocates, proving empirically what we've argued philosophically: an armed populace enhances safety. For the 2A community, the implications are electric. This data arsenal supercharges litigation against holdout states like California and New York, where courts can no longer ignore nationwide trends. Politically, it's a rallying cry—midterms loom, and voters in swing states are waking up to the hypocrisy of fearmongering elites who fly private jets while disarming the peasantry. Share this far and wide; it's not hyperbole to say we're witnessing the Second Amendment's vindication in real time. The experiment's verdict? More guns in good hands mean fewer victims—full stop. Time to double down.

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Digging deeper, this isn’t just cherry-picked stats—it’s a longitudinal smackdown backed by researchers like John Lott and the Crime Prevention Research Center, who’ve tracked permit issuance exploding from 2.7 million in 1987 to over 22 million today, without the predicted bloodbath. Context matters: during the same period, urban crime waves tied to soft-on-crime policies and gang activity persisted in strict-gun-control havens like Chicago and New York, underscoring that criminals don’t follow laws, but armed victims do. The clever twist? This experiment was involuntary—Supreme Court wins like Bruen (2022) forced states to reckon with the Second Amendment’s plain text, stripping away may-issue gatekeeping that favored the elite. Critics’ failed prophecies aren’t just wrong; they’re a goldmine for 2A advocates, proving empirically what we’ve argued philosophically: an armed populace enhances safety.

For the 2A community, the implications are electric. This data arsenal supercharges litigation against holdout states like California and New York, where courts can no longer ignore nationwide trends. Politically, it’s a rallying cry—midterms loom, and voters in swing states are waking up to the hypocrisy of fearmongering elites who fly private jets while disarming the peasantry. Share this far and wide; it’s not hyperbole to say we’re witnessing the Second Amendment’s vindication in real time. The experiment’s verdict? More guns in good hands mean fewer victims—full stop. Time to double down.

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