If you're looking for some good news amidst all the doom and gloom out there, pay attention to what's going on with violent crime across the country... particularly the most heinous violent crime of all.
As Axios reported earlier today, murders are dropping at a staggering rate in most big cities, and that's just part of the story.
Homicides fall 17% in big U.S. cities as the post-pandemic crime decline continues https://t.co/AP9hdb3nq2
— Axios (@axios) August 11, 2026
That's on top of an estimated 18 percent decline in the homicide rate last year, which leads crime analyst Jeff Asher to make a bold prediction about what we'll see when 2026 comes to a close.
While it’s not fully clear that 2025 will 100 percent be the lowest murder rate ever recorded in the US, it is decently clear that the 2026 murder rate will be by far the lowest ever recorded.
Here is the US murder rate since 2010 with 2024 revised upwards (from around 4.9 per 100k to 5.1 per 100k) and where the country’s murder rate is forecast to end up in 2025 and 2026. The 2025 murder rate should come in at between 4.1 and 4.4 per 100k while the 2026 murder rate should come in at an astonishing 3 to 3.8 per 100k based on the currently available data. Could that change? Yes. Is it a sensible forecast given all we currently know? Also yes. Will the 2026 rate be substantially lower than anything we've ever recorded (FBI murder estimates back to 1960)? Almost certainly yes.
By "substantially," Asher says the homicide rate in 2026 could be 20 percent lower than the previous record low recorded by the FBI, which was 4.4 homicides per 100,000 people in 2024. At the current pace, this year's homicide rate would be a full point lower at just 3.4 per 100,000.
This is Drew Brees breaking Dan Marino’s single-season passing record with one game left to play or Mark McGwire eviscerating Roger Maris’ 61 home runs in 1998 (minus the steroids). Consider that the United States could have the fewest murders since the mid-1960s in 2026 despite having about 150 million more people. That’s about ten thousand fewer people murdered in 2026 than in 2020, 2021 and 2022. That's an even larger drop in murder than occurred in the 1990s in an even shorter timeframe.
We not only have about 150 million more people, but about 400 million more firearms. A government commission established by Lyndon Johnson estimated that there were 90 million firearms in private hands in 1969. Now the estimates are closer to 500 million. A lot more people, a lot more guns, and substantially fewer homicides, in both raw numbers and per capita homicide rates.
According to the gun control lobby, firearms today are even more lethal than they were in the 1960s. Back then, five- or six-shot revolvers were the most popular handguns, and while the AR-15 was available, bolt-action and lever-action far more common.
There were far more restrictions on the right to carry as well. Vermont was the only permitless carry state, and Washington and New Hampshire were the only two states with explicitly "shall issue" regimes in place. There probably weren't as many "gun-free zones" established in state law, but that's only because the number of people who could lawfully carry was far less than it is today.
According to the basic premise of gun control, none of this should be happening. In fact, groups like Giffords predicted that crime would soar when "may issue" laws were struck down in Bruen, and they've been warning about the dire consequences of permitless carry every time another state adopts the policy.
Since passing Constitutional Carry, Florida's violent crime rate has fallen through the floor.
— National Association for Gun Rights (@gunrights) August 11, 2026
Despite @GIFFORDS_org and others promising that it would cause widespread bloodshed and chaos.
The best the can do now is just pretend it isn't happening. https://t.co/98C3DOljKD
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. It's now the primary strategy for the gun control lobby. For decades, they've argued that more guns inevitably leads to more crime. Well, there are more guns in the hands of private citizens than at any point in U.S. history, and the homicide rate is lower than it's been in at least 66 years (and likely far longer).
They've bemoaned "gun everywhere" and the demise of restrictive carry laws, but permitless carry states actually have the lowest homicide rates in the country. Now they're trying to pivot to suicide prevention, but bans on "high capacity" magazines and so-called assault weapons have no impact whatsoever on the suicide rate. Even "red flag" laws are ineffective at reducing suicides, with researchers claiming that just one suicide is prevented for every 17 Extreme Risk Protection Orders that are issued.
Self-harm is a mental health issue, not a gun control issue, and "red flag" laws are actually detrimental to addressing suicide because they give politicians a cheap and easy way of saying their "doing something" without taking the substantial steps of increasing access to mental healthcare, especially the in-patient acute care that's critical to those in crisis.
The gun control lobby isn't going away just because their fundamental argument has been absolutely shredded by reality. They're already predicting that these record lows will soon rebound because of the Trump administration's support for the Second Amendment, and there are plenty of people out there who'll buy into that argument despite all evidence to the contrary.
