A new report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association exposes a stark reality: gun-controlled Chicago has more murders this year than all major cities in pro-gun Florida combined.
The contrast between these two approaches to public safety and Second Amendment rights could not be more dramatic. While Chicago has layered restriction upon restriction on law-abiding gun owners, Florida has moved in the opposite direction—expanding constitutional carry rights while simultaneously supporting robust law enforcement. The results, according to the latest data, tell a compelling story about which approach actually protects citizens.
The data tells the story strict gun control advocates don’t want patriots to hear.
The report released August 5, 2026 showed Chicago had 211 murders for the year.
Florida’s major cities — Miami, Orlando, and Tampa — had a combined 29 murders during the same time frame.
Eight murders in Miami, ten in Orlando, eleven in Tampa — versus Chicago’s 211.
This disparity is particularly striking when considering the population sizes involved. These three major Florida metropolitan areas, when combined, represent millions of residents living under a constitutional carry framework. Yet their total murder count doesn’t come close to matching a single city that has embraced the gun control model that many politicians continue to advocate for nationwide.
The robbery numbers paint an even clearer picture. Chicago witnessed 2,168 robberies versus a total of 385 in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa combined.
This means Chicago experienced more than five times the number of robberies compared to the three Florida cities combined. For residents concerned about their personal safety and property, these figures represent real-world consequences of policy decisions. Robbery is often a precursor to more violent crime, and the stark difference suggests that criminals in Chicago may feel emboldened in ways that criminals in Florida do not.
Gov. Ron DeSantis posted to X about Florida’s success: “Florida has a 50 year low crime rate. When you enact law and order policies and support law enforcement, the bad guys pay the price.”
Florida has constitutional carry, which DeSantis signed into law April 3, 2023, making Florida the 26th constitutional carry state. Law-abiding Floridians can carry firearms for self-defense without permits or government paperwork.
This represents a fundamental trust in citizens to exercise their constitutional rights without government gatekeeping. The constitutional carry movement recognizes that the Second Amendment itself serves as the only “permit” law-abiding Americans need. Florida joined a growing list of states that have eliminated the bureaucratic barriers between citizens and their right to self-defense.
Chicago operates under the opposite philosophy.
Illinois requires law-abiding citizens to acquire a Firearm Owners Identification card simply to own a gun for home defense. A second document — a concealed carry permit — is mandatory to carry for self-defense.
This two-tiered permit system creates bureaucratic obstacles that only affect those who follow the law. Criminals, by definition, ignore these requirements entirely. The system thus creates a compliance burden exclusively on the very people who pose no threat to public safety—law-abiding citizens seeking to protect themselves and their families.
The city layers on more restrictions: a 72-hour waiting period on gun purchases, a red flag law, an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, gun storage laws, a “Glock switch” ban, a bump stock ban, and regulations on firearms Democrats call “ghost guns.”
Cook County adds county-level controls on top of the state mandates, giving Chicago even more Second Amendment restrictions than other parts of Illinois.
This patchwork of overlapping regulations creates a confusing maze of compliance requirements. Law-abiding citizens must navigate city, county, and state restrictions simultaneously, while criminals simply ignore all of them. The layered approach reflects decades of politicians responding to crime by restricting the rights of those who aren’t committing crimes.
The results speak for themselves.
Florida trusts its law-abiding citizens with constitutional carry and backs law enforcement. Chicago stacks gun control laws on top of gun control laws and restricts the rights of the law-abiding.
One approach produces a 50-year low crime rate. The other produces 211 murders in eight months.
These contrasting outcomes provide real-world evidence in the ongoing debate over gun rights and public safety. While correlation does not automatically prove causation, the dramatic differences between Chicago’s restrictive approach and Florida’s constitutional carry model offer important lessons for policymakers nationwide. The question facing communities across America is whether they will learn from these results or continue down paths that the data suggests are failing to protect citizens.
Florida has a 50 year low crime rate. When you enact law and order policies and support law enforcement, the bad guys pay the price. https://t.co/8V66EU3UZl
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
