Gun Murder Rates
A study by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA Network Open) concluded that gun homicide rates among black men have exploded far beyond any other demographic group in America.
The Wall Street Journal wrote about the JAMA report that: “Since 1990, rates of gun-related homicide have been highest among black men aged 20 to 24, with 142 fatalities per 100,000 people in this group in 2021—a 74% increase since 2014.”
“Homicide rates are as much as 23 times higher among black men and as much as nearly four times higher among Hispanic men than among white men, the analysis said.”
A co-author of the JAMA study, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that to stem violence in groups that have high homicide rates, “there are certain programs like violence prevention, firearm-buyback programs, and safe storage.”
It must be the guns that are at fault. Nothing was put forward to address the psychological or cultural issues that might lead to such violence.
Non safe storage is responsible for the increase in black men’s homicides?
Criminals are going to start selling their illegal guns back to the government?
How about violence prevention through anti inner city gang programs?
Nah, the only other possible root cause is racism. Except, more blacks are killed by other blacks than by whites.
On March 15, 2022, a left-wing advocacy organization called The Third Way published a 15-page study with the provocative title “The Red State Murder Problem.” The study states that “murder rates are far higher in Trump-voting red states than Biden-voting blue states.” Not surprisingly, dozens of media outlets picked up the “study” and reported on its “findings.
We should have known; Trump did it!
Both theories about the rise in black men homicides and “The Red State Murder Problem” are shot-full-of-holes by some credible research.
According to a 2021 PEW Research Center survey, the household gun ownership rate in rural areas was 79% higher than in urban areas and suburban households are 37.9% more likely to own guns than urban households. Despite lower gun ownership, Biden-voting urban areas have much higher murder rates than Trump-voting rural areas.
This was further emphasized in a November 2022 article in the Heritage Foundation; which countered The Third Way’s study: “The Blue City Murder Problem.” It wrote that: “…most crime is hyper-localized, so the fundamental flaw with the study and the reason it does not deserve any serious consideration is that the ‘murder rate’ in each state is largely a function of the large number of murders in a state’s biggest city or cities.” (Remember - those Biden-voting urban areas.)
Heritage then stated: “When you remove the homicide-riddled cities from the state murder rate featured in the Third Way study, you dramatically lower the murder rate for that state, upending their conclusions and exposing the piece for what it really is: a straightforward attempt at political projection dressed up as a ‘study.’”
To further evidence this, On January 17th, John Lott published a paper about murder rates by counties, based on data from the FBI’s 2020 Supplementary Homicide Report. He wrote: “Murder isn’t a nationwide problem. It’s a problem in a small set of urban areas, and even in those counties, murders are concentrated in small areas inside them…”
He further wrote that: “The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 73% of murders.
So, the problem isn’t guns or racism but seems to be certain areas of cities.
Per Lott:
The five counties with the highest number of murders are:
o Cook County—(Chicago.)
o Los Angeles County
o Harris County – (Houston)
o Philadelphia County
o New York City – (the 5 counties)
Could soft-on-crime, George Soros funded district attorneys have anything to do with the surge? All top five counties have Soros funded D A’s
- Kim Foxx, Cook County - (Chicago)
- George Gascon, Los Angeles County
- Kim Ogg, Harris County - (Houston)
- Larry Krasner, Philadelphia
- Alvin Bragg, Manhattan
How about the mayors? All five are members of Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns and have some of the strictest gun laws and all five cities have been dominated by the Democrat Party:
- Lori Lightfoot-Chicago
- Eric Garcetti-L A (Former Mayor and Karen Bass new current Mayor)
- Sylvester Turner-Houston
- James Kenney-Philadelphia
- Bill DeBlasio-NYC (Former Mayor and Eric Adams new current Mayor)
It should be noted that under Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani murder rates in NY City declined.
Lott also points out that in 2020, the murder rate was 5.84 per 100,000 people. If the 5% of the counties with the worst number of murders somehow were to become a separate country, the murder rate in the rest of the US would have dropped to 2.99 per 100,000.
What else might be the cause of this rise in homicides?
The start of this gun homicide spike coincided with the rise of Black Lives Matter, “defund the police” protests, and urban riots. Any connection?
About the same time frame, Soros funded D A’s put in radical left policies that promote rather than inhibit crime. These policies generally are:
- Refusing to prosecute entire categories of misdemeanor crimes, including theft, drug possession, shoplifting, receiving stolen property, breaking and entering, destruction of property, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and more.
- Forbidding prosecutors from including sentencing enhancements or allegations of prior convictions or special circumstances for egregious crimes or actions.
- Forbidding prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in any case.
- Forbidding prosecutors from seeking life without parole sentences for any crime.
- Refusing to prosecute violent teenagers in adult court for such crimes as murder, child abuse, and rape.
- Requiring prosecutors to ask for the release of duly convicted violent felons, whose appeals have been denied, after these felons have served as least 15 years of a longer sentence.
- Prohibiting or limiting prosecutors from asking for bail to ensure the presence of the defendant at the next court hearing and/or taking into consideration the defendant’s prior criminal record.
As pointed out, the homicide rates are localized into specific areas of the inner cities. These inner cities have the worst crime, the worst schools and the worst economies and yet they reliably vote for Democrats and, in spite of the strictest gun laws, those Democrats continually misdirect attention away from them and onto lawful gun owners.
