Memorial Day Weekend is a Firearm Violence Bellwether...2025 Looks Better!

2025 is shaping up to be less violent overall than 2024, with cities like Chicago, Atlanta, and St. Louis leading the way

First, here’s an overview of firearm-involved homicides and injuries occurring over Memorial Day weekend in 2025 and how these numbers compare to previous years. Reassuringly, numbers of shootings are down in both categories nationwide.

Then, although more cities experienced some increase in shootings this year compared to last, most cities experienced the same amount of violence, while a substantial number of cities (250) lowered their numbers. Since the data in this analysis includes all communities in the US where at least one Memorial Day weekend shooting has been recorded since 2014, numerous small, quiet towns are contained in this. In most of these smaller towns, violence staying the same means that incredibly low numbers of shootings remain low, i.e., approaching or at zero.

By contrast, many of the largest cities in this data set reported substantial decreases in firearm violence this Memorial Day Weekend. For example, Chicago is making great strides (finally!) in reducing firearm incidents, as is St. Louis.

Next, Atlanta, St. Paul, and Cleveland don’t report nearly as many firearm homicides as Chicago or St. Louis in a typical year (or over Memorial Day weekend), but these places have contended with a lot more firearm assaults since the pandemic and George Floyd. They are now experiencing steep decreases in overall shootings, driven mostly by decreases in firearm injuries, as observed during this recent Memorial Day weekend.

Finally, smaller cities like Birmingham, Alabama and Lansing, MI also have a lot more firearm injuries rather than homicides and deserve recognition for sharply reducing such incidents in 2025.

Lansing is highlighted because with a population of around 100,000, it’s a good example of a small midwestern “Rust Belt” city where the firearm homicide rate rose sharply during the pandemic era. By 2024, the firearm homicide rate in Lansing returned to a level I characterize as below adverse benchmark(s) for a community’s rate of annual firearm fatalities.

Lansing’s continued reduction of Memorial Day weekend shootings suggests the city is on track to reduce its firearm fatality rate even further in 2025. I anticipate similar improvements in the other cities featured in this post. This aligns with other city-level analyses tracking 2025 year-to-date murder rate trends. A few smaller cities are still underperforming, including Albuquerque and Colorado Springs. I’ll share additional graphs of Memorial Day violence trends in selected "laggards” tomorrow. Thanks for reading!