Again, Post-Bruen Predictions of Doom Have Failed to Materialize, This Time in New Jersey

A recent story about the spike in carry permit applications since Bruen perfectly fits the cycle we see happen whenever gun control laws are eased or eliminated. Every time a legislature considers repealing or reforming the law to better respect citizens’ rights, the usual red shirts (in both the literal and in the Star Trek sense) show up to screech about all of the blood that will be spilled as a result. When permitless carry is passed or courts strike down an unconstitutional gun law, all they can do is tear their hair and cry to any media that will listen about terrible the dire things are going to happen.

Strangely, though, none of that ever seems to happen. And New Jersey is a perfect example.

Let’s first talk about what triggered the usual deluge of doomsday predictions. Since the NYSRPA v Bruen decision, more than 41,000 people have applied for carry permits in the Garden State…people who couldn’t otherwise have gotten permits before. Specifics about the number of permits that the state has actually gotten around to issuing haven’t been released, but even if bureaucrats dragged their feet, that still means at least 10,000 more guns are now legally on the street in the state.

The surge in legal carry has also likely lead to many more people buying handguns to train with and carry, so even if all 41,000 people haven’t been issued licenses yet, we’re talking about tens of thousands more guns now in circulation that before Bruen.

Given the anti-gunners’ incessant predictions of doom, there should have been a huge wave of gun-related crimes sweeping the state. So let’s see what’s happened . . .

Instead of rivers of blood running in the streets, we find stories about how safe New Jersey is. In fact, it’s reportedly one of the safest states in the country now, with four towns listed as among America’s safest suburbs. Scrolling further down, I didn’t see any “gangland” style slayings, shootouts over parking spaces, schools full of dead children.

To be fair, New Jersey isn’t crime-free. No state is. With towns like Camden, Trenton and Paterson, the Garden State has its share of violent, gang- and drug-related crime (and political graft), just as any state does. But that’s totally independent of any legislation or court rulings. None the gun control laws passed in Trenton have the slightest effect on career recidivists, gang members and drug dealers.

So one again, it turns out that all of the hysterics on the part of the Gun Control Industry was nothing more than anti-gun fearmongering. None of it came to pass. Making it easier for law-abiding people to own and carry firearms does not, in fact, result in spikes in violent crime.

Still, there are enough gullible people out there that the res shirts and their pals in the press figure it’s worth ratcheting up predictions of doom and gloom every time things move in the right direction in terms of firearm freedom. The average person doesn’t pay enough attention to the news to know that the warnings have literally never come true anywhere that carry laws have been eased.

Maybe someone could upt together a PowerPoint presentation tracking all of the times these predictions of mass violence and chaos simply didn’t happen. Instead of letting anti-gun people run wild with their nonsense, the facts need to start being presented.