Late to the party here, but this piece by John J Donohue in The Atlantic just came out today, and the concluding paragraph kind of blew me away:
"Remarkably, from today’s vantage point at least, Texas banned carrying guns outside the home for protection from 1871 to 1995. As of June 2022, this would now be deemed unconstitutional under Bruen—apparently no one in Texas noticed this ostensible Second Amendment violation for 125 years. When it started down its pro-gun path, Texas had almost a 20 percent lower murder rate than California and an only slightly higher murder rate than New York. After 25 years of increasing gun restrictions in California and New York, Texas has seen an astonishing change: In 2021, the state had a 27 percent higher murder rate than California and a 75 percent higher murder rate than New York. The Supreme Court seems to want to close those gaps—by making California and New York as deadly as Texas. Referencing unpublished work by a supportive researcher, an NRA lawyer told the Supreme Court in the Bruen oral argument that allowing more citizens to carry guns would have no impact on crime, ironically conceding that even the most pro-NRA assessment of the data found no benefit from more gun carrying. The best, peer-reviewed evidence, though, reaches a far more ominous conclusion concerning the march toward deregulation. Sadly, America’s lead as the most homicidal affluent nation will only grow unless more fundamental reform to its gun policies is undertaken, and the American people are allowed to have their say."
Late to the party here, but this piece by John J Donohue in The Atlantic just came out today, and the concluding paragraph kind of blew me away:
"Remarkably, from today’s vantage point at least, Texas banned carrying guns outside the home for protection from 1871 to 1995. As of June 2022, this would now be deemed unconstitutional under Bruen—apparently no one in Texas noticed this ostensible Second Amendment violation for 125 years. When it started down its pro-gun path, Texas had almost a 20 percent lower murder rate than California and an only slightly higher murder rate than New York. After 25 years of increasing gun restrictions in California and New York, Texas has seen an astonishing change: In 2021, the state had a 27 percent higher murder rate than California and a 75 percent higher murder rate than New York. The Supreme Court seems to want to close those gaps—by making California and New York as deadly as Texas. Referencing unpublished work by a supportive researcher, an NRA lawyer told the Supreme Court in the Bruen oral argument that allowing more citizens to carry guns would have no impact on crime, ironically conceding that even the most pro-NRA assessment of the data found no benefit from more gun carrying. The best, peer-reviewed evidence, though, reaches a far more ominous conclusion concerning the march toward deregulation. Sadly, America’s lead as the most homicidal affluent nation will only grow unless more fundamental reform to its gun policies is undertaken, and the American people are allowed to have their say."