Gun Control & RKBA

GunXer: We accept, per-capita, double the murders, during "peacetime", as a country which considered itself very much in a civil war. Is this what our lives are worth? Is America just that much of a shithole country?

Some of us are doing better at handling murder & violent crime than others.

The Two-Decade Red State Murder Problem

1 The murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump has exceeded the murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden in every year from 2000 to 2020
2 If Blue State murder rates were as high as Red State murder rates, Biden-voting states would have suffered over 45,000 more murders between 2000 and 2020.
3 If Blue State murder rates were as high as Red State murder rates, Biden-voting states would have suffered over 45,000 more murders between 2000 and 2020.

As we noted in our last report, Republicans do a much better job blaming others for crime than actually stopping it.

Republicans have made crime a major selling point over the past several elections. In 2020 and 2022, they ran ads accusing Democratic candidates of wanting to “defund the police”.. In Oct 2022, one-quarter of ads from Republican candidates and PACs focused on crime.

In March of 2022, we released a report that found murder rates in 2020 were 40% higher in Trump-voting states than Biden-voting states... [then] we studied homicide data going back to 2000 to see if this one-year Red State murder epidemic was an anomaly. It was not. Despite a media narrative to the contrary, a wide and widening Red State murder gap has spanned the past two decades.

And while media reports give the impression that murder rates are skyrocketing in blue areas, murder rates have actually increased at far higher rates in Trump-voting states over the past two decades, widening the Red State murder gap from a low of 9% in 2003 and 2004 to a high of 44% in 2019, before falling to 43% in 2020. Since 2000, murder rates have increased 39.4% in red states and just 13.4% in blue states.

Some on the right argue that murder rates in red states are higher because of the blue cities in those red states [with dem mayors, or vote dem - Hous & Dallas both voted Hillary ~55% - 45% - jimmy]
Of course, blue states have more blue urban areas than red states. That is what makes most states blue. The fact is that murder rates have increased in urban, suburban, and rural areas... [Note that red state big cities tend to still adopt their red state's position on guns, within reason for rural or urban - jimmy]
... to answer these critics, we performed an exercise to give red states a special boost. .. we removed all of the murders in the county with the largest city for 19 of 25 red states. In six rural red states home to no cities with large numbers of murders, this calculation was not possible
Over the course of the full 21 years between 2000 and 2020, the Red State murder rate was still 12% higher than the Blue State murder rate, even when murders in the largest cities in those red states were removed. And the murder rate was still higher in 18 of 21 years. https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-two-decade-red-state-murder-problem

Why are Murder Rates Persistently Higher in Red States?
1 Guns: Gun ownership rates are far higher in red states than blue states.
2 Poverty: Studies have found a correlation between poverty and violent crime
3 Educational Attainment:
4 Social Service and Police Resources: Despite accusations that Democrats “defund the police,” we found that cities with Democratic mayors fund police at far higher levels on a per capita basis than cities run by Republican mayors. In 2020, the 25 largest Democrat-run cities spent 38% more on policing per capita than the 25 largest Republican-run cities.