“Not as Bad as the ‘90s”? Firearm Violence in Small, Mid-Size, and Large US Cities, 2015–2021

Abstract

I examine firearm homicide and injury data from more cities ( N = 1,328) during a longer timespan (2015–2021) than previous research on firearm violence encapsulating the Covid-19 pandemic. I contextualize the historic 2020 spike in gun violence within a broader trend of worsening gun violence impacting hundreds of US cities since 2015. More cities (364) are surpassing adverse homicide rate benchmarks observed during the 1980s–1990s, and US states situated in all regions contain numerous peak gun violence cities. Examining gun violence trends outside of the largest US cities is imperative, since 42% of all firearm homicides occur in places with populations <250,000, and over two-thirds of peak violence cities (243) have fewer than 100,000 residents. A shared sense of the scope and severity of the problem of gun violence is also urgently needed. For too many American communities, it’s not as bad as the 1990s, it’s worse.

Trends in workplace homicides in the U.S., 1994–2021: An end to years of decline

“…T A B L E 3 Autoregressive models for trend in number of workplace homicides by location and activity of the homicide. While previous studies in this area have mainly concentrated on evaluating trends in firearm related homicides and violence, [9][10][11]24,33,34 this study included all workplace and non-workplace homicides. Our results mirror those in previously published research focusing only on firearm related homicide or violence as an outcome.…”

“…2 Additionally, overall U.S. homicide rates due to firearms have shown increases recently after falling over the previous 25 years. [7][8][9][10][11] Comparing workplace homicides to overall U.S. homicides trends can provide important insights into how workplace and non-workplace homicides may differ and how that may affect violence prevention efforts.…”