Do Big Cities With Republican Mayors Have Less Gun Violence?

Born-again Republican Mayor Eric Johnson claims a better track record of reducing crime in Dallas than his Democratic counterparts. This is partly true...

Newly-identified Republican Mayor Eric Johnson claims a better track record of reducing crime in Dallas than his Democratic counterparts leading other major cities. This is partly true. On average, large cities with Republican mayors had lower firearm homicide rates during the summer of 2023 than those with Democratic mayors.

Firearm Homicides Under Democrat vs. Republican Mayors

But gun violence has been falling in both Republican and Democrat-led cities, and firearm homicides and assaults are still higher in Dallas in 2023 than they were under Johnson’s Democratic predecessor. Nonetheless, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, who is Black and a (former) lifelong Democrat, just joined the Republican Party. Touting his success in reducing crime “in every major category, including murder, year-over-year for the past two years”, Johnson argues that Democratic policies exacerbate crime and that Republican leaders who champion law and order make cities safer. How do such claims hold up against gun violence statistics? Specifically, do Republican-led cities have fewer firearm homicides and assaults than their Democratic counterparts? Have Republican mayors been more successful than Democrats at reducing gun violence in their cities since the 2020 "spike"? I examined firearm fatality and injury data from the 57 largest US cities/boroughs to answer these questions. What I found did and did not surprise me. I’m aware that most large cities with high rates of gun violence are controlled by Democrats, since that’s most large cities. I am less familiar with trends in the smaller but not insignificant number of Republican-run major cities.

But first, let’s acknowledge that it’s a mayor’s prerogative to juke the stats when describing crime trends in their city. Yes, overall homicides (committed with any weapon) are down in Dallas since 2021. This holds for firearm homicides, which spiked at 72 during the summer of 2020, but fell to 53 during the summer of 2023 (a 26% reduction). However, as I noted last week, most city Firearm Homicide Rates are still elevated in 2023 compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Before the pandemic, summertime firearm homicides were relatively infrequent in Dallas. For instance, there were 28 shooting fatalities from Memorial Day through Labor Day weekend in 2017 and 31 in 2018, and the city averaged 34 firearm homicides each summer from 2015-2018. This was during the tenure of Democratic mayor Mike Rawlings, who led Dallas from 2011- June 2019. By contrast, Dallas has averaged 63 firearm fatalities each summer since 2020-2023 while “Republican” mayor Johnson has led the city. (There were 59 firearm fatalities in 2019, this occurred under the watch of both Rawlings and Johnson, since Johnson assumed office June 17th, 2019.

So, I guess if one were to compare gun violence levels in Dallas under Democratic Mayor Johnson (circa 2020-2022) to now-Republican Mayor Johnson (2023-) we could rate his claim that cities with mayors named Eric Johnson who identify as Republicans had fewer gun homicides in 2023 compared to cities with mayors named Eric Johnson who identify as Democrats. That said, non-fatal shootings were actually up in Dallas this summer compared to 2022, contributing to an observed overall high Gun Violence Rate in Dallas in 2023 compared to the prior year. Dallas is actually among 19 major cities where summer firearm homicides were down, but shooting assaults were up compared to 2022.

Summer Firearm Violence (Fatalities + Injuries) 2023 vs. 2022

But Johnson only claimed that “major” crimes were down in Dallas, and we all know that a non-fatal shooting, “tis but a scratch!” Right? Let’s move on to the broader claim.

Are Republican-led cities safer?

This is a fraught question since municipal power configurations vary across cities, especially small and mid-sized ones. Nonetheless, mayors of large cities usually enjoy the “strong” configuration, appoint police chiefs, and are accountable for public safety outcomes in their cities. It’s therefore worth exploring big city trends to answer this question. A caveat, however, is that mayoral partisanship rarely "flips," so you cannot create a natural experiment with enough cases of before/after a city changed from red to blue or vice versa to test this hypothesis. Instead we’re comparing different cities cross-sectionally, a weak way to correlate effects, since it’s impossible to tease out who is directing CJ policies - mayor/city council, DAs, police, etc.

Still, my cross-sectional analysis surprised me, first because I didn’t realize there were over a dozen large cities (380k plus residents) that currently had a Republican mayor (if we count Johnson in this tally). Additionally, I expected the very low firearm violence rates in blue cities in California (a state with some of the lowest levels of urban gun violence) to pull down the average overall rate among blue cities despite places like Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Milwaukee inflating it. I was mistaken. Republican cities do appear to have lower firearm homicide and overall gun violence rates compared to the 16 cities with Republican (13) or Independent (3) mayors in 2023.

Gun Violence Under Democrat vs. Republican Mayors

This is interesting considering that cities with Republican mayors tend to be located in states that are '“red” like Texas (Dallas, Fort Worth & Arlington), Florida (Jacksonville & Miami) Oklahoma (Oklahoma City & Tulsa), or at least “purple,” like Nebraska (Omaha), Colorado (Aurora & Colorado Springs), and Virginia (Virginia Beach).

Democrats sometimes rebuke characterizations of blue cities as crime-ridden hellscapes by claiming that blue cities have rampant gun violence because they’re situated in Republican-controlled states with permissive gun laws. I presently live in a deep blue state (Illinois) with high levels of gun violence, but I was born and raised in crimson-red Alaska where homicides are relatively rare, so I’m skeptical of such claims. The blue city/red state fallacy is illustrated here:

Cities with the Highest Summer 2023 Gun Violence Rates

Among the largest US cities, the ten with the highest summer firearm violence rates in 2023 all have Democratic mayors. Then, Minneapolis, Detroit, Oakland, Chicago, Baltimore, and Wisconsin are all situated in states with a Democratic “trifecta” government. Philadelphia resides in a state with a Democratic Governor but a divided legislature, while Washington D.C. remains a Democratic stronghold without statehood.

Memphis and Atlanta are the only blue cities in red states on this list.

My take-away point is that government partisanship is too blunt an instrument to explain annual fluctuations in firearm violence, but Johnson’s also not wrong about the severity of gun violence in Democratic-led cities. Mayors bear ultimate responsibility for public safety in their cities. Mayors like Eric Johnson are right to celebrate reductions in gun violence under their watch; they should be held accountable for persistent, elevated levels too.