Episode #2231 - Hammer and Nigel Full Show

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Hammer and Nigel.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:01)
You believe these characters?

**Nigel Guy Relford** (0:02)
They're weird of us.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:03)
So let's rock!

**Nigel Guy Relford** (0:06)
My name is Nigel Guy Relford, the gun guy, 2A attorney, licensed firearms instructor, filling in for Jason Hammer, a crime continuing its decline across major US cities for the first half of 2026 Another historic low homicide rate on track. We I think it's important to note that we're not sure researchers aren't clear on one explanation, but maybe you can come up with a couple for us, and we'll go down the list here, Guy. Homicides down 18%.
Carjackings, largest decline of any crime category, down 47%. This is not just Indianapolis. I'm talking about across the country. Yep. Motor vehicle theft, 20% down. Robberies are down. Residential burglaries, commercial burglaries, grand larceny, theft, gun assaults, aggravated assault, all down. Now, there are some crimes that have increased, which doesn't really surprise me. Drug offenses, 12%. That is the largest increase, is the drug offense. We're talking domestic violence incidents, up 8%.
Sexual assaults, up 3%. And shoplifting, up 4% from last year.
So, you know, the big picture crime, continuing to decline across cities for the first half of 2026 What do we attribute this to? And how can we keep it going in the right direction?

**Guy Relford** (1:40)
Well, great questions, Nigel. And let's also make sure people understand what we're talking about. We're talking about first half of 2026, compared to the first half of 2025 And 2025 was a record year, lowest homicide rates, for instance, in decades. So 2025 was a good year, and 2026 is down dramatically, and a lot of these violent crime categories, not all, but in several, including homicides down 18% from what was a record year in 2025 on the positive side. And that's all excellent. I've got my theories, as you might guess, as a two-way guy, and a firearms instructor, and somebody who carries everywhere he can lawfully carry. Do you know that just from December of 2024 to May of 2025, there was an over 5% increase in the number of people who carry a gun regularly? And overall now, across the country, we're right at about 30% of Americans who carry a handgun regularly.
And consider this, you talk about carjackings, largest decline carjackings. If you want to be a carjacker, and there's a one in three chance that the person sitting in the car that you want to come jack is going to shoot you in the face, which has happened, which has happened, and which is absolutely legal, by the way, because carjacking is a forcible felony. You can use deadly force to prevent a forcible felony. Indiana's Castle Doctrine, to relate things right here to Indiana, Indiana's Castle Doctrine includes your occupied motor vehicle in terms of the ability to use deadly force to simply prevent an unlawful entry into or attack on your occupied motor vehicle, just like your home. So there's legal protection. More and more people have guns. Why in the world would you want to be a carjacker when there's that kind of probability that someone's going to resist your carjacking with deadly forces they're legally capable of doing? And things like robberies and muggings and across the board, criminals now have to be that much more concerned about the law abiding citizen who's carrying a gun.
And yes, self-defense shootings are up because more and more people have the capacity to defend their lives and their families.

**Nigel Guy Relford** (3:56)
That was my next question.
I don't know that I saw anything about this article involving self-defense shootings. And I know you've been on the forefront. I know you've just had a self-defense trial.

**SPEAKER_7** (4:11)
Right. Sure did.
Murder case.

**Nigel Guy Relford** (4:14)
As a 2A lawyer. Do you have stats on that at all?

**Guy Relford** (4:19)
Well, they're up. In fact, Rick Snyder and I were going back and forth on this. Yeah, self-defense shootings, looking specifically at Indiana, are definitely up and comprise a much larger percentage of I don't have numbers off the top of my head to give you, Nigel, but I want to say something like 15, 20 percent just over the last few years in terms of the increased number of overall homicides that are deemed to be justified self-defense. And this is even here where, for instance, in Marion County, for some reason, as I just went through with a murder case, where, in my mind, it was always clear my client acted in self-defense, they still charge these as crimes. But overall, the number of homicides is up across the country in terms of those attributable to justified self-defense. And just a little vocabulary, people hear me say homicide, they're going, oh, wait a minute, if it's justified, it's not a homicide. A homicide is just the intentional killing of a human being. So if somebody kicks my door in in the middle of the night and comes in to commit a home invasion and I shoot them, that's the intentional killing of a human being. So it's a homicide, but it's a justifiable homicide, therefore not a crime.