“Crime’s way down thanks to Trump — Dems will fight to send it back up,” warns an editorial in the N.Y. Post. “Law-and-order works. Immigration enforcement works. And — like it or not — Trump’s policies, including ICE, are making America safe again.” As our alerts have repeated time and again, focusing on the actual criminals rather than on law-abiding citizens yields the best return in public safety.
Anyone inclined to dismiss the abatement in crime as partisan, pre-election propaganda should review the detailed analysis prepared by Dr. John Lott on just how profoundly things have changed under President Donald Trump when compared to the Biden-Harris administration and its pro-criminal, revolving-door, “social justice” policies.
Dr. Lott’s analysis, Go Figure: Arrests, Prosecutions and Deportations Fuel Record Drop in Crime (RealClearInvestigations), relies on the government’s most recently released Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) for 2025.
Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) national crime statistics, the NCVS uses information obtained annually from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households on the frequency and characteristics of the criminal victimization experienced by the respondents, and includes incidents that are not reported to police (or not reported by law enforcement agencies to the FBI).
Given that in 2024, “victims reported only about 48% of violent crimes and 31% of property crimes” to police, the NCVS is a far more accurate yardstick of crime. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, for instance, recorded a 2025 decline in felony violent crime “that was 157% larger than the FBI’s and a decline in property crime that was 32% larger.”
The NCVS data shows that as compared to 2024, in 2025 several kinds of violent and property crimes declined by double-digit numbers. Felony violent crime fell by 25%, rapes by 13%, robberies by 27%, and aggravated assault dropped 31%. All categories of property crimes declined significantly as well, with an overall property crime drop of 19%. With the exception of rape, Dr. Lott states that “these are the largest one-year reductions recorded since data collection began 53 years ago.”
Further, although the NCVS only tracks non-fatal crimes, FBI data shows murder rates in 2025 have mirrored the historic decline in other violent crimes. Last year’s murder rate was 4.1/100K pop., down from roughly 5.1/100K in 2024, and the rate continues to fall. “If preliminary FBI data showing an additional 18.4% decline during the first seven months of 2026 hold for the full year, the murder rate would fall to approximately 3.36 per 100,000.”
Three factors make these statistics especially compelling.
First, they follow a Biden-era crime wave during 2021-2024, when felony violent crime skyrocketed by 59% and violent crime, including misdemeanor simple assault, jumped by 42%.
Second, far from being a minor statistical blip, these drops “go far beyond normal cyclical fluctuations in crime.” Professor Carl Moody, a crime researcher quoted in the RealClearInvestigations article, describes it as “a historic plunge in crime to levels never seen before in the United States,” adding, “we are all safer in our communities than we ever have been.”
Third, and most importantly, this tectonic shift in crime coincides with a surge in firearm ownership across this great nation. A national survey of firearm ownership and use conducted this year by Professor William English of Georgetown University found that firearm ownership continues “to broaden and deepen” across race and gender lines. Almost 33% of U.S. adults personally own firearms (as opposed to household or spousal guns), and these guns are used defensively in approximately 2.2 million incidents per year. And, as Dr. Lott’s analysis points out, concealed carry is increasingly popular: the “share of general-election voters who carry concealed handguns has increased from 24.3% in December 2024 to 30.9% in July 2026.”
All in all, the latest statistics on crime and gun ownership undermine, conclusively, the hysterical and grim predictions of gun control proponents that more guns in the hands of regular citizens can only lead to mayhem in the streets and an explosion in violent crime. Instead, we have these real world facts: gun ownership is way up and crime is way down.
Many of our readers may remember Trump’s remarks at the 2019 NRA-ILA Leadership Forum in Indianapolis, where he promised, “As we protect gun rights for law-abiding citizens, we are also getting guns out of the hands of violent criminals,” with enhanced law enforcement, arrests and prosecutions aimed at reducing crime. Rather than eviscerate the Second Amendment, as President Joe Biden sought to do, President Trump has made protecting gun rights a cornerstone of his administration, starting with his February 2025 Executive Order on Second Amendment Rights.
While anti-gun lawmakers continue to push to disarm ordinary Americans, Trump’s sustained focus on actual criminals has paid huge public safety dividends for all Americans. Along with his unwavering support for the Second Amendment, this is one of the most significant – and underreported – achievements of President Trump’s second term.
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