Gun control doesn't work. We know this. We know that there are terrible studies published that even RAND can't count as proving gun control is viable and we know that anti-gun predications pretty much never come to pass.

The streets don't start running red with blood and our cities don't turn into Dodge City and the OK Corral.

Yet the anti-gun rhetoric continues, ignoring the truth and continuing to push distortions, falsehoods, and misinformation.

And the NSSF is ready to give some anti-gun officials a bit of a reality check.

Several of the nation’s most ardent gun control activist governors and mayors of the largest metropolitans are staring down a divergent reality. They continue to stick with publicizing increasing gun control restrictions on law-abiding citizens as crime is going down in many – though not all – major cities, while gun sales continue to increase at “new normal” historically high rates.

The tired scare tactic of warning “more guns means more crime” is crumbling apart as millions of law-abiding Americans are awakening to what it means to be a lawful and responsible gun owner. The streak of more than one million NSSF-adjusted FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verifications processed for the purchase of a firearm hit 55 months in February 2024.

Those firearm sales figures include significant increases in gun ownership in some of the country’s bluest states and cities. In those same areas, crime has been rampant over the past several years as politicians embraced “Defund the Police” efforts, bail reform policies and going soft on criminals.

The rest of the law-abiding population has pushed back in a resounding way.

Eyes on the Big Apple

One city where the divergent reality is most prominently seen today is New York City. Perhaps no city has seen more dissatisfied citizens about their feeling toward public safety than the Big Apple. It was a major factor under former accidental Mayor Bill de Blasio and continues under Mayor Eric Adams. That includes a stretch in 2022 where 70 percent of New York City residents felt unsafe.

That figure hasn’t improved much in the past year. The New York Times reported on a new poll showing that only 37 percent of city residents felt satisfied with the level of safety in their neighborhood. The same poll found that only half of residents admitted they planned to stay in the city past 2028.

And let's be real, New Yorkers have a valid reason to not feel particularly safe. They're not. Not on the subway, at least.

See, people buy guns when they don't feel safe. It's not why all people buy guns, mind you, but people who feel like they're in some kind of danger have a tendency to buy a firearm for peace of mind if nothing else.

Gun control, however, is supposed to make people safer. If people are safer, they have more of a tendency to feel safer. Not always, mind you, because the media can skew perceptions, but if gun control worked as proponents claim, then New Yorkers should feel especially safe.

Meanwhile, gun ownership continues to increase, with 55 straight months of 1 million firearm purchases. That's a lot of guns and where has violent crime been? For the most part, down from the year before, with 2020 being a notable anomaly.

Guns aren't the problem. They never have been and never will be. On their own, guns have no volition. They're simply a thing, a glorified paperweight if used in such a manner.

That's the reality check a lot of anti-gun officials need.

They're not making anyone safer. They're doing the opposite because those people can't take safety into their own hands.

What's worse is that on some level, I think they know it.