Crime is a major problem in the United States, 66% of Americans believe, with 81% saying it is a major problem in large cities, according to an August 2025 poll by the Associated Press/NORC [previously the National Opinion Research Center]. The poll, which was taken shortly after President Donald Trump (R) cracked down on crime in Washington, D.C., also revealed that most Americans (55%) thought his administration’s use of federal resources was acceptable. Indeed, in the weeks after taking over the D.C. police force, violent crime nearly disappeared on the mean streets of our nation’s capital.
During his term, President Joe Biden (D), through various executive orders and actions, attempted to reshape the nation’s narrative on violent crime and guns. Under Biden, guns were labeled a “public-health crisis.” Additionally, Biden emphasized that violent crime—including incidents where deranged murderers opened fire on innocent victims—was the fault of guns and our freedom, not the killers.
President Trump, in contrast, is showing what the real problems are and how they can be solved. Let’s look at 10 anti-gun lies about crime and our freedom the Trump administration is now revealing.
Lie 1:
Guns Are a “Public-Health Crisis”
The idea that “guns are a public-health crisis” gained currency in 1983 when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided to apply a “public-health approach” to issues historically treated as criminal-justice matters. Under this new framework, firearms would be treated like germs spreading a contagious disease.
In June 2024, then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory declaring “gun violence” a “public-health crisis.” Murthy presented his ill-advised declaration in a 40-page Surgeon General advisory titled “Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America,” in which he repeatedly cited statistics from the many-times-discredited Gun Violence Archive. The move was largely aimed at boosting anti-gun groups’ support for then-President Biden ahead of the 2024 election.
Last March, President Trump corrected the mischaracterization of a criminal issue as a health issue by ordering the removal of Murthy’s anti-gun tract from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website. This action was in response to his “Protecting Second Amendment Rights” executive order, which aimed to identify and eliminate “any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens.”
Lie 2:
Guns Cause Crime
Thanks to John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), we’ve known for decades that more guns lead to less crime. Now, President Trump is demonstrating this. In addition to cracking down on violent D.C. criminals, the Trump administration’s other focus in the District was to speed up the processing of concealed-carry permit applications.
Washington, D.C., was compelled by the courts to implement a “shall-issue” concealed-carry law, but that doesn’t mean D.C. officials made it straightforward or efficient; in fact, they made it so difficult that D.C. ranks near the bottom for the percentage of adults with a carry permit. Since President Trump’s D.C. executive order, the number of permit holders has increased while violent crime has stayed nearly nonexistent.
As the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) put it: “With these actions to ensure law-abiding Americans have tangible and timely access to right-to-carry permits, the Trump administration has demonstrated an informed understanding of the Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home and a dedication to protecting it in practice.”
Lie 3:
Gun-Control Laws Decrease Crime
Through numerous polls, Americans have expressed how fed up they are with the violent crime that plagues many of the big cities in our country. Politicians in many of these jurisdictions continue to blame firearms for the violence as they push for increasingly restrictive gun laws. The real truth, as President Trump has pointed out, is that increased law-enforcement focus reduces crime.
A research brief published by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund examined homicide trends during the 2020-2022 de-policing period and the subsequent “re-policing” years. The study found that increased policing activities, such as arrests and stops, were associated with lower homicide rates, and that “the sharper the increase in police activity, the greater the fall in homicides across the 15 cities.”
Incidentally, most Americans already understood that, even if anti-Second Amendment politicians haven’t realized it. A CPRC-commissioned poll from December 2024 showed that only 19% of respondents believed that more gun control would decrease crime, while 54% thought the best way was to crack down on criminals by keeping violent offenders off the streets through arrests and detention.
Lie 4:
Ignoring Criminals Makes Us Safer
Focusing more on guns than on criminals, as anti-gun politicians have done for years, hasn’t made anyone safer. But you wouldn’t guess that from listening to politicians like Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D).
“We know that our communities are safest when we fully invest in housing, community safety and education,” said Johnson when President Trump threatened to deploy the National Guard to eradicate violent crime in Chicago. “The National Guard will not alleviate the housing crisis. It will not put food in the stomachs of the one in four children that go to bed hungry every night in Chicago.”
Many other big-city leaders ignore criminals like Johnson does. Indeed, tolerating violent crime was a choice for District of Columbia officials until President Trump forced their hand. According to a December 2021 study, approximately 86% of D.C. homicide victims and suspects were already known to the criminal justice system, and nearly 50% had been previously incarcerated. President Trump’s emphasis has proven that focusing on violent criminals, rather than ignoring them, has made the District safer.
Lie 5:
Most Crime Guns Come from Rogue Gun Dealers
Gun-ban groups and anti-gun politicians like to constantly yarn about how the vast majority of guns used in violent crime come from so-called “rogue” gun dealers who sell guns to anyone who wants one without regard for the law; in fact, Biden used these supposed “rogue” dealers as his excuse to implement his zero-tolerance policy.
The assertion is a lie, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). All federal firearms licensees (FFLs) must complete a federal background check before transferring a firearm to a purchaser. In 2023, the national average time-to-crime was 6.76 years, according to ATF data. This statistic calculates the time it takes from when a gun is sold at an FFL to when it is recovered at a crime scene. This is important to the ATF and local law enforcement because a short time-to-crime number—say, less than a year—of guns sold by a particular dealer could indicate that an FFL is either being fooled by straw purchasers or someone there is illegally selling guns to prohibited persons. Law-enforcement officials could then investigate to halt the illegal flow of guns. But, as the 6.76-year average shows, FFLs are not the problem the former Biden administration claimed them to be—actually, guns are being stolen and otherwise illegally obtained well after lawful sales.
Lie 6:
The Second Amendment is not a Civil Right
Many anti-gun zealots don’t even see the Second Amendment as a civil right. Instead, they want to treat this civil right as if it were merely a legal privilege. This is another falsehood that President Trump quickly addressed after taking office. In April, the Department of Justice (DOJ) established a Second Amendment Task Force to ensure the right to keep and bear arms isn’t treated as a second-class right.
“The prior administration placed an undue burden on gun owners and vendors by targeting law-abiding citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi. “It is the policy of the Department of Justice to use its full might to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”
Traditionally, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division focused on safeguarding freedoms related to voting, housing and employment, but now it is also protecting citizens’ Second Amendment rights.
Bondi will chair the special unit, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche serving as vice chair. The unit will collaborate with personnel from the FBI, the ATF and with key offices within the DOJ, including the associate attorney general, solicitor general, the Civil Division and the Civil Rights Division.
Lie 7:
The State Should be Able to Delay Our Rights Indefinitely
While anti-gun politicians and bureaucrats sometimes intentionally drag their feet to delay their constituents’ right to keep and bear arms, gun owners understand that a right delayed is a right denied. Fortunately, the Trump administration also shares this view.
That was made clear when Bondi announced an investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to see whether it is resisting pro-Second Amendment caselaw by “engaging in a pattern or practice of depriving ordinary, law-abiding Californians of their Second Amendment rights” through excessively long processing times or other means. The DOJ has now filed a lawsuit.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that the Second Amendment is not ‘a second-class right,’” said Bondi in a press release announcing the investigation. “Some states and localities, however, have resisted this recent pro-Second Amendment caselaw. And California has been a particularly egregious offender.”
Lie 8:
Commonly Owned Semi-Automatic Rifles Are Not Used for Self-Defense and Hunting
The idea that banning an entire segment of firearms commonly used by law-abiding Americans was a key part of the Biden administration’s gun-control efforts. During his time in office, Biden repeatedly urged Congress to ban so-called “assault weapons.”
The Trump administration isn’t just opposed to banning entire groups of guns, but it also has argued against a state-level bans. In the case Barnett v. Raoul, the DOJ filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in support having the ban overturned.
“Just a few months after Bruen, Illinois outlawed some of the most commonly used rifles and magazines in America via a so-called ‘assault weapons’ ban,” says the brief. “In doing so, Illinois violated the Supreme Court’s clear directive that States cannot prohibit arms that are ‘in common use’ by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”
Lie 9:
“Silencers” Are Simply Tools for Assassins
During his single term, President Biden appeared to categorize suppressors alongside “assault weapons” as being tools of criminals. Actually, suppressors are commonly owned additions to firearms that protect people’s hearing.
The Trump administration recognizes that suppressors are hearing-protection devices that are so effective that some countries require their use. Consequently, on July 4, when President Trump signed his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the legislation removed the $200 tax on firearm suppressors, although the devices remain regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA).
Now that the NFA’s taxes have been removed from suppressors and certain other classes of NFA firearms, the law’s reach over those items may be in its final days. The NRA and other groups have filed a court challenge to the remaining parts of the law, and pro-gun lawmakers are exploring legislation in Congress to eliminate the NFA.
Lie 10:
Murder is a “Red-State Problem”
When President Trump announced plans to focus on violent criminals rather than guns and gun owners, anti-gun politicians panicked, as they were aware that their long-term negligence would be revealed. One such politician, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), called murder a “red-state” crime problem.
Following this assertion by Newsom and others, a deeper analysis of the data showed that homicide rates tend to be higher in urban areas that are overseen by anti-gun politicians.
One reason many of these cities have such high violent-crime rates is they have mayors who think like Chicago’s Johnson, who recently said, “Jails and incarceration and law enforcement is a sickness that has not led to safe communities.”
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