Gun Control Group Claims Trump’s Making Crime Worse. Data Tells a Different Story.

The gun control group Giffords is claiming (and complaining) that Donald Trump’s policies in the first 100 days of his second term are making the country less safe, going so far as to declare him “weak on crime” and accusing him of making decisions that have “made America more dangerous.” 

We’re 100 days into Trump’s 2nd term. So far he has:

– Pardoned armed extremists from Jan 6
– Fought to arm people convicted of domestic abuse
– Given rogue gun dealers a free pass to break laws
– Shuttered the Office of Gun Violence Prevention

So much for being tough on crime.

— GIFFORDS (@GIFFORDS_org) April 29, 2025

This is the same Giffords that said absolutely nothing when Joe Biden pardoned his son for illegally obtaining and possessing a firearm by lying about his drug addiction on the Form 4473 when he bought a revolver in Delaware, by the way. 

It’s true that Mel Gibson, who pled no contest to misdemeanor battery almost 15 years ago, has had his Second Amendment rights restored by Attorney General Pam Bondi, but there’s no evidence whatsoever that anyone and everyone convicted of domestic abuse will have their rights restored in a similar fashion. And as for Giffords’ claim that Trump is giving “rogue” gun dealers a pass, he’s instead ended the Biden-era “zero tolerance” policy for FFLs that treated minor paperwork errors as willful violations of federal law that led to dozens of license revocations over the past few years. 

The Office of Gun Violence Prevention served as a jobs program for the gun control lobby, as well as providing anti-gun activists with a perch inside the executive branch. It’s understandable that Giffords is upset that they’re no longer intimately associated with the commander-in-chief, but that hardly makes Trump soft on crime. 

In fact, according to crime analyst Jeff Asher, crime rates across the country are generally headed in the right direction. Just a week ago Asher declared that crime is “likely down an enormous amount” so far this year. 

This assessment is based on multiple avenues and sources of evaluating crime data.

There are more than 380 agencies covering nearly 100 million people (96.8 million, so close to 100!) in the latest Real-Time Crime Index sample through February 2025. Property crime was down 16 percent in the sample driven by a nearly 30 percent drop in motor vehicle theft while violent crime was down 14 percent thanks to 21 percent drops in murder and robbery. 

According to Asher, the declines started in 2022, but haven’t reversed course now that Trump’s in office. Compared to April 2024, a number of big cities have seen substantial drops in the homicide rate as well as overall rates of violent crime. Here are a few examples:

• Dallas – 34.4% decline in homicide, 13.4% decline in violent crime
• Chicago – 25% decline in homicide, 25.8% decline in violent crime
• New Orleans – 21.4% decline in homicide, 25.8% decline in violent crime
• Baltimore – 24% decline in homicide, 19.8% decline in violent crime
• Albuquerque – 50% decline in homicide, 20.5% decline in violent crime

It’s worth noting that crime in New Orleans plunged last year as well, contrary to the predictions of the anti-gunners that Louisiana’s permitless carry law would make the state and the Crescent City more dangerous places. And though New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has been hinting at a special session on gun control, claiming a semi-auto ban is need to make the state a safer place, things appear to be trending in the right direction in Albuquerque without prohibiting the sale of some of the most popular and commonly owned firearms in the country.  

Asher says he also found year-to-date shooting data from 27 cities with “available 2025 data through at least the end of March.” According to the statistics, shootings (both fatal and non-fatal) were down in 21 of the 27 cities, with an average of a 27% decline, which he calls “another datapoint in favor of the plunging crime being real.”

Now, I’m not saying that Donald Trump is solely responsible for the declines reported by Asher, only that the data paints a very different picture than the assertions of the anti-gun group. 100 days into the president’s second term, the country is  generally a safer place than it was when Joe Biden tottered off stage left, and the executive branch is far more 2A-friendly than it was just a few months ago.