Complacency is the Enemy

Of Note: I wrote this article before war broke out, which now consists of heightened terror threat in the homeland. That rather illustrates my point concerning complacency, does it not?

The homicide rate significantly fell in 2025.  This is likely due to a combination of enhanced policy crackdowns with illegal immigration, as well as the continuing decline in violence since the summer of 2020.  While there is merit to the observation that better medical and response capabilities have made the gap wider between homicide and “attempted homicide,” violence, in general, seems to have declined this past calendar year.

And with that, complacency may prove the greatest adversary.  In 2020 and 2021 an estimated ten million Americans armed themselves for the first time.  The stark reality of a world-wide pandemic plan-demic, along with the “Summer of Love” riots, led many to take responsibility for their own safety for the first time.

Yet, 2025 may have clocked in with the lowest murder rate since the 1950s.  Despite the media manufactured outrage against the illegal immigration crackdown, the Continental United States seems a comparatively safe place of late, unless you live in downtown Baltimore, or Memphis, or any of the predictable and consistent hotspots of violence.  Awesome, right?

I firmly believe that the worst approach to this seemingly good news is to get complacent.  While a drop in homicide numbers is a good thing, the threats that now manifest are much different than those of the past.  The statistics may have gone down as a result of less gangsters shanking each other in allies, but the “enhanced” threats that face the public continue to change, and in many categories, increase. 

While I have not seen the conclusive research on it yet, it does appear that 2025 also had a reduction in mass-casualty attacks compared to the several years prior, but do not forget that there has been a steady increase in this form of violence over the last twenty years, even as almost all other forms of violent crime have fallen.  As such attacks result from mental illness, nihilistic ideology, and extremist views of many kinds, this is a phenomenon that does not typically correlate with other violent crime. 

Just as more “standard” violence declines, I see no reason to think that mass-casualty attacks will also do so, as we have seen an overall decrease in standard violent crime, with an unfortunate overall increase in mass-casualty attacks, for thirty years now.   If 2025 broke that trend for just a year, we can hope that continues, but it is unlikely.  The kinds of mental illnesses, social grievance, and extremism that fosters such attacks have not decreased, but instead continue to increase. 

Ironically, I will urge consideration on a topic I have raised before; the forms of violence the citizen is likely to face may have pushed further to the extremes on the bell curve.  Rather than worrying only about the more common paradigms of armed robbery or assault, the two extreme ends I reference, that seemingly continue to grow in frequency, is “simple assault” at the one end and mass casualty attack on the other. 

As society grows more divided, more self-isolated, and generally ruder, the propensity to get violent in an unarmed capacity has seemingly ramped up.  from mass protests in one form to another, to the individual level where we see people willing to go to blows immediately over road rage disputes and the like, simple assault is alive and well, if not increasing.  Carrying less-lethal weaponry at all times should be considered mandatory.  OC Spray is the obvious choice for most here, and I truly think that carrying such, and being proficient with, should be a top priority for any citizen who intends to be armed and capable of dealing with interpersonal violence.  Simple assault remains, statistically, a much higher probability than lethal assault. 

On the opposite side of the violence bell curve falls the mass-casualty event, which are often committed by assailants with long guns, sometimes multiple assailants, and sometimes by armored assailants.  Now is the time to be carrying a serious, capable, handgun.  If extreme discretion and concealment is the top priority, then any handgun is better than none, but in most states and localities in the nation law abiding citizens can carry without legal issue, and carrying a true fighting pistol makes good sense with such forms of violence on the docket.    

Do not become complacent, but understand that the possibility of the large scale, mass-casualty, events have increased and will likely continue to do so.  Arm and plan accordingly.