Gun control groups and anti-gun politicians warned that restoring the right to carry, ending ATF’s bump-stock ban and rolling back NFA restrictions would make America more dangerous. A new Second Amendment Foundation factsheet collects 85 of those statements–and places them beside crime figures showing murders falling sharply.
According to SAF’s compilation, estimated U.S. murders dropped approximately 36% between 2022 and 2025. The 2025 murder rate tied the FBI’s historical low. Texas and Florida recorded substantial murder-rate declines after adopting permitless carry. Even the broad mass-shooting count cited in the report fell after the Supreme Court struck down the bump-stock ban.
The October 2026 factsheet, The Bloodbath That Never Came, was prepared by Kostas Moros, SAF’s director of legal research and education. Its central question deserves an answer: Why should Americans keep surrendering constitutional rights to people whose sweeping predictions of disaster run against the crime trends that followed?
The Bloodbath That Never Came – SAF Fact Sheet
National Numbers: Three Years of Falling Murders
SAF’s chart tracks revised FBI national murder and nonnegligent-manslaughter rates: 6.6 per 100,000 residents in 2022, 6.0 in 2023, 5.1 in 2024 and 4.1 in 2025.
The estimated number of murders declined 9.1% in 2023, 13.7% in 2024 and 18.1% in 2025. From 2022 to 2025, the total fell from 21,923 to 14,085.
SAF describes the 2025 reduction as the fastest recorded decline in murders. It also reports a 9.3% reduction in violent crime that year, identifying it as the largest drop since FBI national estimates began in 1936.
AmmoLand previously examined the FBI’s 2025 crime report and the murder rate, tying its historical low. SAF now adds a detailed record of what opponents of gun rights said would happen during this period.
Bruen: 39 Statements About the Danger of Restoring Carry Rights
When the Supreme Court decided NYSRPA v. Bruen on June 23, 2022, it struck down New York’s “proper cause” requirement for carrying a handgun. Ordinary Americans would no longer have to persuade officials that their need for self-defense was sufficiently special.
As AmmoLand’s analysis of Bruen explained, the right to bear arms extends outside the home. The anti-gun lobby responded with warnings of death, destruction, and blood in the streets.
Brady declared that the ruling would “assuredly result in more gun violence immediately.” Everytown’s Eric Tirschwell predicted more people would be intimidated, wounded and killed. David Hogg said the decision would kill young people and argued that a person carrying for protection puts everyone around them at risk.
The political response was equally sweeping. New York City Mayor Eric Adams warned against the city becoming the “Wild West.” Then-Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh predicted more deaths and more dangerous neighborhoods. California Attorney General Rob Bonta asserted that “more guns in more places make us less safe.”
SAF also includes a November 2022 filing by New York defendants in Antonyuk v. Hochul, warning that an injunction threatened a substantial increase in firearm injuries and deaths.
Against those statements, the report places three consecutive annual declines in national murders.
The local results are striking as well. New York City recorded 688 shooting incidents in 2025, its lowest recorded total, while murders fell from 382 to 305. Baltimore recorded 133 homicides, its lowest total in nearly 50 years. New Jersey shooting victims declined from 924 in 2023 to 559 in 2025, reaching a record low for the third consecutive year.
Officials portrayed restored carry rights as a public danger. The broad outcomes they warned about moved in the opposite direction.
Permitless Carry: 17 Warnings, With Declines in Texas and Florida
SAF’s permitless-carry section covers statements concerning Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and other states.
Then-Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg offered an especially direct prediction in September 2021: “I just think more guns — more access — necessarily means more shootings and more killings.”
Texas permitless carry took effect that month. According to Texas Department of Public Safety figures cited by SAF, the state’s murder rate fell from 7.1 per 100,000 in 2021 to 5.2 in 2024—a 27.3% decline.
Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams labeled permitless carry “criminal carry.” Shannon Watts used the same label when discussing Indiana. Other statements warned of accidental shootings, suicides, stolen firearms and chaos.
Florida drew its own barrage. GIFFORDS accused lawmakers of making violence worse through permitless carry. Moms Demand Action volunteer Gay Valimont warned that putting more guns in more places would bring more tragedies.
AmmoLand covered Florida’s passage of permitless concealed carry, which took effect in July 2023. SAF reports that Florida’s murder rate fell 18.8% in 2024, the first full year afterward, and that all seven index offenses declined.
The state-specific outcome comparisons in this section concern Texas and Florida. They should not be presented as separate statistical findings for every state mentioned.
Bump Stocks: 11 Warnings After Cargill
The Supreme Court’s June 14, 2024 decision in Garland v. Cargill struck down ATF’s attempt to classify bump stocks as machine guns.
AmmoLand’s coverage explained why ATF exceeded its statutory authority. The case concerned the statutory definition of a machine gun, rather than a Second Amendment ruling. That distinction did little to restrain the rhetoric.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent warned of “deadly consequences.” Sen. Martin Heinrich declared that innocent Americans would die because of the decision. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said: “This decision will put blood on our streets.”
SAF compares those warnings with an 18.1% decline in national murders in 2025, the first full year after Cargill.
It also cites Gun Violence Archive figures showing mass-shooting incidents falling from 659 in 2023 to 503 in 2024 and 407 in 2025. The 2024–2025 decline was approximately 19%, with 2025 recording the fewest incidents since 2018.
Those figures use GVA’s broad definition: four or more people shot, excluding the shooter. They are not a count limited to public mass murders, nor a count of incidents involving bump stocks. Even under that intentionally broad measure, the national total fell.
NFA Taxes and Litigation: 11 Statements Recycling the Same Fear
SAF’s NFA section follows the July 2025 legislation zeroing specified taxes, effective in 2026, and the later court rulings and DOJ decisions.
Everytown President John Feinblatt portrayed the tax reduction as a gift to the gun industry that would endanger police and communities. GIFFORDS Executive Director Emma Brown warned of deadly consequences, later calling an NFA ruling a dangerous step backward.
By October 2, 2026, Brown was invoking Al Capone and organized crime to attack the DOJ’s decision against appealing. Anti-gun accusations, as usual, lack any factual substance.
The factsheet reports that the preliminary murder rate among reporting agencies fell 20.8% in January–July 2026 compared with January–July 2025. That period covers the first months of the zero-dollar tax.
It does not cover the consequences of the later NFA judgments and appeal decisions. The 2025 decline likewise occurred in the year the tax legislation was signed, before the tax change took effect.
Readers can follow AmmoLand’s coverage of the subsequent ATF NFA guidance for the separate question of what federal relief means for gun owners.
DOJ Grant Cuts and Forced-Reset Triggers: Seven More Warnings
The report also examines reactions to Trump-era DOJ and ATF actions, including violence-intervention grant cuts and the forced-reset-trigger settlement.
In April 2025, GIFFORDS’ Paul Carrillo predicted an immediate surge in violence from removing intervention workers. The organization followed with a warning that violent crime would spike unless DOJ reversed its cuts.
After the FRT settlement, Brady President Kris Brown said the administration would be directly responsible for deaths when the technology was used in a shooting. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison warned against more lethal firearms on the streets.
AmmoLand reported the government’s retreat in the forced-reset-trigger litigation, including the agreement to return confiscated triggers.
SAF places this collection of warnings beside the reported 9.3% national violent-crime decline in 2025 and a Council on Criminal Justice finding that homicides fell 21% across 35 large cities, representing 922 fewer victims.
Those broad figures do not isolate the effects of particular grants or triggers. They do challenge the sweeping picture of a country descending into greater violence.
A Documented Record–and a Demand for Accountability
SAF says every entry reproduces verified wording. Sixty-four of the 85 entries cite primary sources, including official releases, government statements, court documents and the speakers’ own posts. The remaining 21 cite news outlets directly quoting the speakers.
The report uses revised FBI estimates for its annual comparisons. Its preliminary 2026 figures concern reporting agencies, and its projected annual rate of approximately 3.2 per 100,000 is SAF’s extrapolation—not an official FBI annual estimate. Applying the decline to the 2025 reporting-agency rate instead produces approximately 3.4.
SAF expressly states that it does not argue gun rights reforms caused crime to decline. It credits Rob Romano, known as @2Aupdates, with helping inspire the compilation through his work highlighting failed gun control predictions.
The report labels its entries “predictions proven wrong.” The strongest supported conclusion is more specific: The broad increases in violence repeatedly forecast by gun control advocates did not materialize in the aggregate trends presented. Murder totals alone do not settle every separate claim about injuries, accidents or suicides.
Gun owners do not need to overstate the evidence. The documented contrast is damaging enough.
Gun Rights Are Not Conditional on Anti-Gun Predictions
The Second Amendment protects a right that government has spent generations restricting. Restoring it should never require approval from organizations dedicated to keeping those restrictions in place.
Americans do not have to prove that carrying a handgun lowers the national murder rate before they may defend themselves. Nor should lawful ownership of suppressors, short-barreled firearms or accessories depend on another round of speculative warnings from Brady, Everytown or GIFFORDS.
For gun owners, these victories are steps toward full restoration. The goal remains ending unconstitutional infringements, including repealing the NFA.
SAF’s factsheet gives lawmakers and readers a record to consult the next time someone claims another gun rights victory will unleash a bloodbath.
The warnings were loud. The murder declines were substantial. The organizations demanding that Americans surrender their rights owe the public an explanation.
Gun rights victories require gun owners willing to fund and sustain the fight. Join the Second Amendment Foundation, support Gun Owners of America, Firearms Policy Coalition, and the National Rifle Association, and get involved with your state’s gun rights organization.
Memberships, donations and calls to lawmakers help carry this fight from the courtroom to the legislature. The goal is full restoration of the right to keep and bear arms, including repeal of the NFA.
If you want these victories to last—and the remaining infringements removed—put your support behind the organizations doing the work.
About Duncan Johnson:
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.
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