"Not as bad as the 1990s." ???

We don't tell advocates for greater equality and social justice they should settle for the status quo because things were worse in the past. Why is public safety our only relative societal priority?

Reports about the homicide surge of 2020-2021 produced by high-profile think tanks consistently compared it to gun violence during the 1990s. For example, the John Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions noted, “Despite this monumental one-year spike, the gun homicide rate is still lower than it was in the early 1990s.” Similarly, the Pew Research Center reminded readers, “Despite rising sharply in 2020, the U.S. murder rate remains below the levels of the early 1990s.” Moreover, they added, “Americans remain far less likely to die from murder than from other causes, including from suicide and drug overdose.” Finally, the Brennan Center for Justice sought to balance “Myths and Realities” about pandemic-era crime increases with this caveat: “Nationally, though, they do not return us to the high crime rates of the early 1990s.”

Subsequently, media coverage about heightened community gun violence reassured audiences that it was not the time to morally panic.[1] Journalists consistently noted that despite the disturbing uptick, the homicide rate had not broken a new national record and “crime remains at or near a generational low.” About New York City, the paper of record described the 2020 murder spike as an “anomaly” since violence in the city, “remained well below the dark days of the 1980s and 1990s.” In a similar vein: “Even with the increase in murders...the mayhem in cities does not begin to rival the high-crime era of late 1980s and early 1990s.” Indeed, New York City’s 447 homicides in 2020 represent a fraction of the 2245 murders committed in the Big Apple in 1990. However, it is highly misleading to extrapolate the experience of New York City as a standard bearer, considering that at least a dozen major cities shattered homicide records in 2020 and 2021 due to elevated firearm violence.

The severity of the 2020 homicide spike was not uniformly dismissed by mainstream media outlets. Both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times published Op-Eds penned by conservative Manhattan Institute fellow Rafael Mangual that raised serious concerns about emerging data. Nonetheless, the narrative assumed a predictable pattern of partisan polarization, especially leading up to the 2022 midterm elections, when left-leaning media and Democratic politicians downplayed the severity of the homicide surge by contrasting it to the worse 1980s and 1990s, while right-wing media and Republican candidates’ campaign ads blasted the airwaves with stories of shootings, car-jackings, and organized retail theft.

Writing in the Atlantic, David Graham describes a potential impetus for shrouding observations about 2020 homicide spike in ambiguity or comparisons to the “dark days” of the 1980s and 1990s: “Because the rates of many crimes fell in 2020 and because murder rates remain well below their early-’90s peak, some observers have downplayed last year’s statistics. Often, warnings not to overinterpret the numbers come from advocates for worthy and necessary causes such as police reform and decarceration.”

Considering how mainstream media narratives framed the 2020 spike in gun violence, it is no surprise that partisan polarization and ambiguity characterize public perceptions of the problem. For instance, Republicans and Democrats have been shown to differently prioritize the issue depending on whether it is described as gun violence or gun crime. Being concerned about firearm violence should not be an ideological position. Scholars must produce and translate research that resolves this tendency.

This is what the 1000 Cities Project aims to do. I examine firearm violence trends in over 1300 cities to highlight the severity and scope of the problem. This isn’t moral panic, it’s rational outrage. I will also be sharing stories from cities that are getting things right and making public safety gains after experiencing a pandemic-era surge in violence. As recently as 2014, the homicide rate was 4.0 per 100,000. We can get back there, but not if we ignore the problem of gun violence or constantly blame it on our political enemies to score points.

Excerpted from: Wade, M. M. (2023). “Not as Bad as the ‘90s”? Firearm Violence in Small, Mid-Size, and Large US Cities, 2015–2021. Homicide Studies, 10887679231163287.

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[1] By contrast, mainstream media provided ample coverage of “mass shooting” events around this time, creating a sense of urgency around this variant of gun violence.