Top 50 Cities for Summer Gun Violence

Washington D.C., Memphis, and St. Louis are on track to break historical records. Numerous small cities are on this list, too.

Below, I report the 50 US cities (among over 1300) with the highest firearm homicide rates (FHRs) observed this summer. Among these, there are roughly equal numbers of cities with populations over and under 100,000. Small cities are increasingly vulnerable to “big city” levels of gun violence.

Summer 2023 FHRs in Cities with >100k Residents

In “American Gun Violence: Defining the Problem” I contextualize present-day homicide and firearm homicide rates (FHRs) in light of historical trends and national, subnational, and international comparisons. To summarize: during the 1980s and 1990s the largest US cities all had homicide rates surpassing 30 per 100,000. The national homicide rate peaked in the 1980s at roughly 10 per 100,000, while the FHR reached 7 per 100k in the early 1990s. These rates had plummeted by the late-1990s (thanks, Mayor Giuliani and President Clinton!) and continued to fall until 2014, when the national homicide rate dwindled to about 4.5 per 100,000 and the firearm homicide rate (FHR) fell to 4 per 100,000. By comparison most Western European countries boast homicide rates of around 1-2 per 100,000.

In 2021, the national firearm homicide rate reached an all-time high of about 7.5 per 100,000, surpassing rates observed in the 1990s. Notably, the proportion of overall homicides committed with a firearm also peaked in 2021, with 81% of homicides being gun murders instead of say, bludgeoning, stabbings, or strangulation.

In sum, annual FHRs >7 are concerning, while FHRs surpassing double-digits are alarming. Now, consider this in light of the US cities with the highest summertime (Memorial Day through Labor Day Weekend) Firearm Homicide Rates per 100,000. This is during a three month time span. Once we calculate the tally with annual data these cities FHRs are going to be stunningly high.

Moreover, numerous “small” cities ranked among the top 50 highest gun violence:

In my next post, I’ll highlight some major cities with below-average FHRs situated in places where some may not except to find them, like Texas and Florida. I’ll also compare city FHRs across several of the largest US states: TX, FL, CA, and PA. Academic researchers studying state-level gun violence trends consistently find that Republican-controlled states have higher levels of gun violence than Democratic states, but city-level comparisons reveal a much more complicated relationship between FHRs and state partisanship in the government (or state gun laws). There are numerous major cities in deep “red” states like Texas and Florida that have low amounts of firearm violence compared to their counterparts in solidly-blue California and Pennsylvania (or Illinois, where I reside). Studying gun violence rates at the community-level provides a more accurate reflection of where gun violence is most and least concentrated.