New CAP report asserts “Cities in Blue States Experiencing Larger Declines in Gun Violence in 2023”

Yesterday, the Center for American Progress Action Fund released this new report which it claims “shows that, on average, cities in blue states have lower rates of gun homicides and shooting incidents than comparably sized cities in red states and are seeing larger single-year decreases in gun violence rates in 2023.”  Here is the report’s “Introduction and Summary” (with footnotes removed):

Gun violence anywhere is unacceptable. Yet increasingly, Americans are forced to grieve the unimaginable horrors of school and hate-motivated shootings in innocent communities, in addition to the daily occurrence of gun violence across the United States.  It is no wonder that Americans see gun violence as a top issue for Congress.  To stop gun violence in this country, every lawmaker at every level of government must come together to pass commonsense gun laws and stop violence before it happens.  Unfortunately, this has not been the case.

Even though gun violence is an epidemic — touching the lives of Americans everywhere — instead of passing stronger gun laws, Republican leaders are choosing to weaponize the issue for political gain by using misinformation to stoke fears of “Democrat-controlled” cities.  In 2022, for example, after a shooter took the lives of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) claimed that gun violence in the cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago is evidence that tougher gun laws are “not a real solution.”  Similarly, despite evidence that New York City actually has relatively low rates of gun violence when controlling for its size, in April 2023, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) used his powers as the House Judiciary Committee chair to hold a field hearing on violent crime in Manhattan to disrepute Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg after Bragg brought charges against former President Donald Trump.  These examples demonstrate a larger coordinated effort by conservatives to make violent crime a “Democrat” issue while at the same time diverting attention from their own public safety failures to address gun violence, including neglecting to make it harder for individuals with violent intentions to obtain a gun.

However, despite the millions of dollars spent on this misinformation campaign, the data on gun violence homicides in America paint an entirely different picture. Original analysis conducted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund on the 300 most populous U.S. cities comparing gun homicide rates from January 2015 to August 2023 finds that, after controlling for population size:

• Cities in blue states, based on how a state voted in the 2020 presidential election, are consistently safer from guns than cities in red states, regardless of which party is represented in city leadership.
• From 2018 to 2021, red-state cities experienced larger increases in gun violence rates than blue-state cities.
• In 2023, blue-state cities are experiencing larger declines in gun violence rates than red-state cities.

Not only do blue-state cities on average experience lower rates of gun violence in each year of the study, but now, gun violence rates appear to be decreasing faster on average in these cities than in red-state cities.  Put simply, the data do not back up the blame-game politics of Republican lawmakers such as Texas Gov. Abbott and Rep. Jordan.