I wasn’t looking for any recent state rankings or research on crime and safety, but Massachusetts has responded to the Bruen decisions with restrictive legislation meant to “display an unwavering commitment to ensuring that Massachusetts remains one of the safest states in the country.”
Have you now? One of the safest? Fine, you made me look!
You will not be surprised to know that Constitutional Carry New Hampshire, with some of the fewest anti-second Amendment laws, was the number one safest state. Again!
Maine, which is starting to slide but continues to allow unpermitted carry, was number two. Vermont, which is working to undermine the Second Amendment as quickly as it can, landed third.
That’s been the case for years. Three Con-Carry states. Three safest states. And Democrats, some from Massachusetts, moved into all three and have been working for longer to take that distinction down.
Vermont will start to fade soon, and Maine will take longer.
Massachusetts ranks number nine on this survey, so one of the safest isn’t a stretch. But if you want to lower crime, economic opportunity, affordable training wages for unskilled labor, and low poverty are relevant. There’s no evidence that disarming law-abiding citizens makes a state or city safer, and absent balanced numbers all around, having fewer gun restrictions isn’t either.
As for New Hampshire, it has a history of low murder rates, a highly educated population, low poverty, and low crime overall despite Dem-run cities like Manchester working hard to wreck it for the rest of us. According to the data crunchers, “Seems like the biggest crime here is NOT being an annoying Patriots fan.”
Good luck finding any of those this year.
Massachusetts? According to these folks, they have the lowest property crime in the nation, but this is the first time the Bat State cracked their top ten (which happened post-Bruen, by the way). But it’s not all good news. “What kept The Bay State from finishing higher? A surprisingly high violent crime rate. While still below the national average, 19th most violent cuts it close.”
That’s instructive.
Chicago, one of our poster children for Democrat Gun grabbing and violent crime, is one of many dangerous cities in America. There are plenty of places where the crime rate is higher, but few that can put up the body count of the Windy City. This makes it ideal for any discussion about the relevance of gun restriction on law-abiding citizens as it relates to “an unwavering commitment to ensuring that[ insert name here] remains one of the safest states in the country.
Gun restrictions can’t prevent homelessness, indiginacy, fentanyl, and human trafficking, or an impossible swell of illegal aliens who have no connection to the culture or language. Progressive states can’t even teach American kids to read English. Their welfare systems see more people slip through the cracks into poverty. Unemployment programs support listlessness. High minimum wages prevent skills acquisition by the untrained. It is a system designed to fail where people find the only way to get a hand up is to lift a hand (knife, bat, or gun) and take something from someone else.
Disarming the law-abiding citizens who might otherwise try to help people outside the failed system is going to produce victims by encouraging criminality.
“While Massachusetts annually ranks as one of the safest states in the entire country from gun violence, the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision nullified existing components of our gun laws, threatening the safety of the Commonwealth’s residents,” [Rep. Ronald Mariano (D-Quincy)] wrote in an Oct. 19 post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Rep. Marino is a good Democrat. Job one is to get the guns any way you can; Second Amendment common sense (or even evidence) be damned. And his well-educated, above-average income constituents probably agree. It is also easier to pretend you are doing something than pay attention to the real problems, especially when your actions will worsen the problem.
That’s what this is.