If you’ve been reading this site for any amount of time, you’ve likely heard me use the phrase “correlation does not necessarily equal causation” (or some variation on that phrase).
And it’s true. Correlation does mean that there is a direct causal relationship (as in one thing causes the other thing).
I’ve used that thinking on a number of occasions to argue as to why anti-2A “arguments” for gun control are, in fact, based on faulty presumptions.
But that’s not to say that correlation does not ever mean causation. In fact, there are times when correlation does most definitely indicate a causative situation.
Consider this: Gun ownership is up in the U.S. Karen Feldscher (at Harvard, no less) writes,
Although an early-pandemic surge in the number of U.S. adults who purchased firearms subsided after several years, there were still nearly 30 million people who acquired guns between 2021 and 2024—and more than 11 million of those were first-time gun owners, according to a new study. Further, a disproportionate share of the new gun owners were members of subgroups that typically hadn’t owned guns in the past, including women, Hispanic people, and people of color.
Now, here’s where that surge in gun ownership, maybe because it was especially among women and ethnic minorities in the U.S., is a causative factor of an outcome, one that anti-2A activists don’t want people to know. Humeyra Pamuk with Reuters writes,
U.S. President Donald Trump touted falling violent crime rates on Friday […].
Now, Pamuk, as anti-2A activists try to do, goes on to say that the dropping violent crime rates started during the Biden administration, but the “decrease” during the Biden administration was actually a decrease in departments reporting crime data to the federal government, not a decrease in actual violent crime (which in subsequent analyses have been shown to have increased during the Biden administration).
But even CBS News, which doesn’t have a reputation as being friendly towards Trump, admits that violent crime in 2025 decreased saying “the nation’s murder rate reaching a 20-year low in 2025 and violent crime overall showing the biggest one-year drop on record, according to data released Friday from the FBI’s annual crime report.”
So, I’m inclined to think that higher rates of legal gun ownership had an effect on reducing violent crime. That’s one important reason that you should train to proficiency, train to remain proficient, and carry daily.