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The FBI’s 2025 Crime Data Just Demolished the ‘More Guns, More Crime’ Argument. Here’s What the Numbers Actually Show.


September 10, 2026

The FBI released its 2025 crime data in August 2026. Violent crime fell 9.3% — the largest year-over-year decline since FBI national estimates began in 1936. The murder rate hit 4.1 per 100,000, tying the lowest level in the FBI’s 70-year historical series. This happened during years of record gun sales and a rapidly growing concealed carry population. The data does not prove guns reduce crime. It does prove that the prediction guns would cause crime to rise was wrong.

9.3%Violent crime decline2025 vs. 2024 — largest single-year drop since FBI estimates began in 1936

18.1%Murder declineLargest single-year decrease since 1937 — third straight year of record drops

4.1Murders per 100,000Ties 1955/56 for lowest in FBI history. Fewest murders since 1968.

18.5%Robbery declineLowest robbery rate in 20 years. Rape -7.6%. Assault -7.5%. Property -12.4%.

Every year, the gun control debate generates predictions. More guns means more crime. Expanding concealed carry will produce shootouts in the streets. Removing barriers to firearm ownership will cause violence to rise. These predictions have been central to the policy argument for gun restrictions for decades. The FBI’s 2025 crime data — released August 14, 2026, in an unusually early publication FBI Director Kash Patel called historic — puts those predictions in direct contact with the facts.

The facts are not ambiguous. Violent crime in the United States fell at the fastest pace since FBI national estimates began 90 years ago. The murder rate hit a 70-year low. This happened during a period when more Americans owned more guns than at any prior point in history, when concealed carry permits reached 20.88 million before constitutional carry expansion made the true carry population substantially higher, and when the gun rights community was in the middle of the most sustained legal and legislative expansion of Second Amendment access since Heller.

The data does not prove that guns reduce crime. Correlation is not causation, and the crime decline is a complex phenomenon that criminologists attribute to multiple factors — demographic shifts, economic conditions, policing strategies, and others. What the data does prove is the specific negative: the prediction that more guns in private hands would cause more violent crime was wrong. Demonstrably, measurably, historically wrong.

“This release confirms that crime in the U.S. is falling at or near a historic clip. This is the third straight year of a record drop in murder and the data for 2026 points to a continued large drop this year.”— Jeff Asher, AH Datalytics, August 2026

The Numbers in Full: What the FBI Actually Found

The FBI released its 2025 Reported Crimes in the Nation data on August 14, 2026, using data submitted by more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies covering 96% of the U.S. population — the broadest data submission in the report’s history. The headline findings:

Overall violent crimeDown 9.3% from 2024 │ Largest single-year decline since FBI estimates began in 1936 │ 328 per 100,000 — lowest since 1968
Murder & non-negligent manslaughterDown 18.1% │ Rate of 4.1 per 100,000 — ties 1955/1956 for lowest ever recorded │ Fewest estimated murders since 1968
RobberyDown 18.5% │ Rate of 49.4 per 100,000 — lowest in 20 years
Aggravated assaultDown 7.5% from 2024
Rape (reported)Down 7.6% from 2024
Property crimeDown 12.4% from 2024
Law enforcement assaultsUP — 90,178 officers assaulted in 2026, a 10-year high │ One category that bucked the trend
2026 preliminary dataViolent crime down 10.6% Jan–Jun 2026 vs. same period 2025 │ Murder down 23% │ Robbery down 19.6% │ Rape down 18.6% │ Trend accelerating
Projected 2026 murder rateJeff Asher projects ~3.5 per 100,000 — would be by far the lowest in recorded U.S. history if sustained through year-end
Data coverage17,000+ agencies │ 96% of U.S. population │ 15,000+ agencies on NIBRS │ Largest coverage in report history

The Historical Context: Why These Numbers Are Remarkable

The 2020 murder spike is the comparison point that makes 2025’s numbers meaningful. In 2020, the combination of COVID disruption, civil unrest, and a sharp pullback in proactive policing produced the largest single-year increase in the U.S. murder rate since record-keeping began. The rate jumped from 5.0 per 100,000 in 2019 to 6.5 in 2020, a 30% increase in a single year that gun control advocates immediately attributed to pandemic-era gun sales.

The argument was simple and politically effective: millions of Americans bought guns during COVID; the murder rate spiked; therefore the guns caused the spike. This became the foundation of what gun control organizations called an “epidemic of gun violence” that required emergency legislative response.

The FBI’s 2025 data requires a reckoning with that argument. Gun sales have remained elevated since 2020. The carry population has grown. Constitutional carry has expanded to 29 states. And the murder rate has not merely stabilized — it has collapsed, falling from 6.5 in 2020 to 4.1 in 2025, a 37% decline in five years that now puts the rate below where it was before the COVID spike and at a 70-year historical low.

If the theory that more guns in civilian hands causes more murder were correct, the murder rate should have remained elevated or continued rising as gun ownership stayed at record levels. It did the opposite. The 2020 spike and the subsequent collapse both correlate with the COVID disruption cycle — the disruption produced both the gun-buying surge and the murder spike through separate causal pathways, and as the disruption resolved, the murder rate fell regardless of whether the newly purchased guns were still in private hands. They were. The murders weren’t.

What the data does not say: The crime decline does not prove that gun ownership reduces crime. The causal relationship between gun prevalence and crime rates is genuinely complex and contested in the academic literature, and honest analysis does not overstate what the data supports. What the data does establish clearly is that the specific prediction — that more guns in private hands would cause violence to rise — was not borne out. The murder rate is at a 70-year low after years of record gun sales. That is a fact, not an argument.

The Gun-Specific Picture: Record Ownership, Record Low Crime

Gun Sales Context

NICS background checks — the primary proxy for gun sales — have been elevated since 2020. The COVID-era gun buying surge added an estimated 8.4 million new gun owners. Subsequent years maintained elevated sales. The total number of privately owned firearms in the United States is estimated by the Small Arms Survey and other researchers at well over 400 million as of 2026. That population of firearms has been in private hands for the entire period during which the murder rate fell from 6.5 to 4.1 per 100,000.

Concealed Carry Context

The CPRC’s 2025 Annual Report counted 20.88 million active carry permits — and that number substantially undercounts the actual carry population because 29 states now allow permitless carry. A 2022 peer-reviewed AJPH study, using 2019 data, estimated approximately 16 million Americans carried handguns at least monthly. That population has grown since 2019 through constitutional carry expansion, the Bruen decision’s normalization effect, and the post-COVID carry permit surge.

The murder rate during this period of expanding carry fell to the lowest level in 70 years. The two facts coexist without proving causation in either direction. But they demolish the argument that an expanding carry population inevitably produces more violence.

NFA Item Context

The NFA tax elimination effective January 1, 2026 produced a 177% increase in NFA checks. More suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs are in private hands in 2026 than at any prior point in history. The preliminary 2026 data shows violent crime continuing to fall 10.6% in the first half of the year, with murder down 23%. The expansion of legal NFA item ownership and the continued crime decline are occurring simultaneously.

What the Gun Control Community Is Saying — and What the Data Actually Shows

The gun control response to the FBI data has been predictable and worth addressing directly. The primary response has been to credit the decline to specific policy interventions — red flag laws in certain states, local violence intervention programs, changes in policing strategies — rather than to acknowledge that the relationship between gun prevalence and crime is more complex than the simple causation model implies.

These alternative explanations may have merit. They may genuinely account for some portion of the decline in specific jurisdictions. But they face a basic problem: the crime decline is national, not jurisdictional. It happened in red states and blue states, in states with expansive gun laws and in states with restrictive ones, in constitutional carry states and in states requiring permits. A policy intervention in California or New York does not explain the murder rate falling in Texas, Florida, and Louisiana simultaneously.

The more honest conclusion — which some criminologists have reached regardless of their policy positions — is that the 2020 spike was primarily a COVID disruption phenomenon and that the subsequent decline reflects the resolution of that disruption, with demographic, economic, and community-level factors playing significant roles that are still being studied. The guns-cause-crime and guns-prevent-crime theories both overfit a complex reality.

What is not honest is the continued invocation of an “epidemic of gun violence” when the FBI’s own data shows the murder rate at a 70-year low. The epidemic framing was built on the 2020–2022 spike. The spike ended. The framing has not caught up with the data.

What 2026 Is Looking Like — The Preliminary Trajectory

The FBI’s 2025 report included preliminary 2026 data covering January through June. The early read: violent crime down 10.6% compared to the same period in 2025. Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter down 23%. Robbery down 19.6%. Rape down 18.6%. Aggravated assault down 7.2%. Every major violent crime category continues declining.

Jeff Asher, whose Real-Time Crime Index tracking has proven highly predictive of final FBI numbers, projects the 2026 murder rate at approximately 3.5 per 100,000 if preliminary trends hold through year-end. That would be, unambiguously, the lowest murder rate in recorded United States history. Not the lowest since 1955. The lowest ever.

The 2026 data will be released in 2027. If it confirms the preliminary trajectory, the “more guns, more crime” thesis will have been falsified by the most comprehensive crime data in American history during the period of the most significant gun rights expansion in American history.

Bottom Line: The Data Is In. Here’s What It Actually Says.

Gun Talk Media does not overstate what data supports. The FBI’s 2025 crime figures do not prove that guns reduce crime. They do not vindicate any specific policy. They do not settle the academic debate about the causal mechanisms of crime decline.

What they do is something simpler and more direct: they establish that the claim used most frequently to justify gun restrictions — that more guns in private hands cause more violent crime — has not been borne out during the most significant expansion of civilian gun ownership in American history. The murder rate is at a 70-year low. Record gun sales and record low murder coexist in the same FBI dataset.

That is a fact. It deserves to be stated plainly, without exaggeration, and without overreach. The gun control community built a policy agenda on a prediction. The prediction was wrong. The data says so.

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Biden Murdered The Credibility Of Crime Statistics For Political Gain


In the chaotic era of the Biden presidency, confusion and manipulation were the only constants. Despite their relentless drive to craft a favorable reality for the 2024 election, the American people saw through the facade. This involved the core issue of public safety: homicide statistics. The administration’s disturbing revisions to murder statistics, stretching as far back as 2003, revealed a troubling willingness to manipulate both current narratives and historical realities to suit their political agenda.

The FBI’s Revisionist Approach to Murder Statistics

Agresti’s investigation reveals that during the Biden administration, the FBI engaged in sweeping revisions of murder data from 2003 onward without providing any explanation, footnotes or clarifications. Where the normal procedure might see a minor adjustment and appropriate annotation, the Biden-era FBI saw fit to rewrite entire years. In some cases, the murder count was increased significantly, by up to 7%, and these modifications came without any of the usual footnoted disclosures that have typically accompanied data revisions. These alterations paint an alarming picture of data obfuscation.

To fully grasp the magnitude of these changes, consider this: the FBI raised the 2003 murder estimate from 16,528 to 17,716—an increase of 1,188 murders, or 7%. Such a revision suggests not just a simple clerical oversight but the rewriting of the historical record itself. Even in the Trump and Obama eras, where revisions occasionally occurred, changes were neither so drastic nor so frequent. Yet under Biden, the trend of such revisions has exploded. The data gathered by Agresti illustrate this rising gap—from 2003 to today, discrepancies between FBI data and death certificates widened into a gulf, growing to an average of 3,711 uncounted homicides per year under Biden—each of the edits designed to make Biden’s record look better than it was.

One of the key points here is the differential between the number of homicides recorded on death certificates and those reported by the FBI. Death certificates are not aspirational; they represent a grim and immutable finality—a dead body, a life lost. Despite their reliability, death certificates have always been more complete than FBI murder reports, simply because they capture every death and categorically classify it. The gap between these figures has always existed, but it has widened considerably under the Biden administration, suggesting foul play, either in local law enforcement reporting, state compilations, or FBI aggregation. In any case, it reeks of political calculation.

Disguising the Reality of Rising Crime

Why would this administration want to downplay murder statistics? The answer is simple: politics. Crime is not an abstract issue; it is viscerally felt by voters, and it reflects the state of the nation’s social contract. As crime rates surged during Biden’s term, public safety became a significant electoral liability for the Democrats. Therefore, downplaying homicide numbers—even if it meant tinkering with historic records—serves a political end. It creates the illusion of competence where none exists.

President Biden and his Department of Justice have taken cues from Orwell’s 1984, where history is continuously rewritten to serve the party’s ends. In 2023, for instance, the FBI reduced the previously reported 2021 murder estimate from 22,536 to 21,462—a reduction of over 1,000 murders, or about 5%. No explanation accompanied this drastic change, leaving Americans to wonder if we’re witnessing bureaucratic incompetence, political manipulation or both.

This level of deceit is not simply a matter of misrepresentation; it represents a violation of the public trust. How can we properly address the crime issue in this country if we cannot trust the very numbers that inform policy? If the numbers can be revised and manipulated so easily, how can the public hold anyone accountable? As Agresti stated, “The FBI has been burying its crime data since the first year of the Biden administration.”

Bureaucratic Subterfuge: Hiding Data from Public Scrutiny

The manipulation of crime data is compounded by the Biden administration’s calculated effort to bury access to FBI crime statistics. Since 2021, the traditional “Crime in the United States” report, which had served as a straightforward, easily accessible source for annual crime data, has been buried under layers of bureaucracy. Now, these datasets are scattered across an array of dropdown menus, vague descriptions and expiring hyperlinks, reducing transparency and, perhaps more importantly, concealing the shocking rise in crime.

Consider the scenario Agresti describes: in 2022, NewsNation reported that 14,677 murders occurred in 2021 based on the FBI’s convoluted and confusing presentation of its data. In reality, the actual estimate was 22,900—8,000 more deaths than reported. These obfuscations serve to mislead the public, downplaying the scope of violent crime and providing a convenient shield for political leaders.

A Crisis in Accountability

The heart of the issue lies not just in the manipulation of data but in the erosion of accountability it represents. The leaders of the FBI and DOJ are appointed by the president, and their actions clearly reflect the priorities of the administration. Instead of serving the American public through transparent reporting, these institutions have twisted the facts to fit a narrative—one that paints the Biden administration as capable and competent while hiding the realities faced by everyday citizens.

Such conduct should concern every American, regardless of political leanings. When the government manipulates data—whether it’s economic statistics like job growth or, as in this case, life-and-death metrics like murder rates—it breaks the fundamental trust that exists between a government and its citizens. Without trust, governance itself falters, giving way to conspiracy theories, paranoia and unrest. The Biden administration is playing with fire by attempting to shape reality to fit its narrative. The consequences will inevitably be felt not only in public safety but in the very fabric of democracy itself.

The Biden Administration: A Legacy of Revisionism

As Agresti has demonstrated, the revisions during Biden’s presidency are unprecedented in scope and audacity. Beyond the murder statistics, it is worth noting that this penchant for deception extends into other areas of governance. One notable example involves the employment numbers, which were overestimated month after month and then quietly revised down—at one point by nearly a million jobs. The administration’s strategy is transparent: make a good first impression and hope the correction goes unnoticed.

In a broader historical context, this kind of manipulation is not new. The Democratic Party has a storied history of deception, stretching back to its opposition to civil rights movements, school integration and its manipulative approach to social issues like immigration. Today, as in the past, the party is willing to rewrite history to maintain power. However, unlike earlier times when information took months or years to spread, today’s digital age has made this duplicity more transparent—if the public is willing to look.

Conclusion: The Need for Vigilance and Transparency

The Biden administration’s alterations to the nation’s murder statistics are emblematic of a deeper, systemic issue within our government—one that prioritizes political expediency over the truth. James D. Agresti, through his Freedom of Information Act requests and diligent research, has shown us that what we face is not just a statistical anomaly but a deliberate attempt to deceive the American people.

As citizens, we must demand better. We must demand transparency, accountability and, above all, honesty from those we entrust with power. The manipulation of murder statistics is not just a question of bureaucratic procedure—it is a fundamental breach of public trust, one that demands scrutiny, outrage and, ultimately, reform. The Biden administration might be able to manipulate the present, but the truth—painful, immutable and ultimately liberating—will prevail.

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Judge Revives Controversial 9/11 Plea Deal


Judge Revives WORST Plea Deal In US Criminal History

A military judge is reconsidering a controversial plea deal involving 9/11 terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants.

An anonymous official informed The Associated Press on Wednesday that the decision to reinstate the deals was made by Air Force Col. and Judge Matthew McCall. The U.S. military has not announced the ruling yet.

The defendants are currently incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the deals were approved by the top official of the Guantanamo military commission.

Fox News reported that if the plea bargains succeed, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who is suspected of being the principal architect of the 9/11 terror attacks and two co-defendants would avoid the death penalty in exchange for guilty pleas.

The plea deals which were revoked by the Pentagon at the direction of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in July have been widely condemned by 9/11 victims and U.S. politicians.

“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024,” a letter from Austin stated.

“Joe Biden, Kamala Harris have weaponized the Department of Justice to go after their political opponents, but they’re cutting a sweetheart deal with 9/11 terrorists,” Sen. J.D. Vance said.

Terry Strada, the national chair of 9/11 Families United, condemned the plea bargains to Fox News Digital earlier this year.

“[The terrorists] committed this heinous crime against the United States,” Strada said. “They should have faced the charges, faced the trial and faced the punishment. Since when do the people responsible for murder get to call the shots?”

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