Which states are bad...and why my political enemies are to blame!
State-level Firearm Homicide Rates and projections for 2025
Politicians love nothing more than blaming the other party for gun violence. They point to high murder rates in blue cities or red states to support their claims, which aim to deflect blame away from themselves for repeatedly failing to control firearm violence within their jurisdictions.
Since 2021 was the worst year in recent history for firearm homicides, this chart nicely illustrates how this phenomenon affected states in all regions controlled by both political parties, with strong and weak gun control laws.1
Another way to visualize this data is to just report the ending Firearm Homicide Rate in the time range (excluding the percent change), using an arrow to denote increases or decreases. I did this for 2025 compared to 2024 here:
The x-axis still shows the FHR, but now states are sorted based on their projected FHR in 2025, with the highest violence states at the top of the chart. If partisan control of government easily explained why some states have more gun murders than others, the states in the bottom half of this distribution wouldn’t be split between so-called red and blue states.
Next I report murder counts (not rates) in 2014, the year the U.S. recorded its lowest murder rate, compared to 2025.
This chart suggests 2025 won’t have fewer gun murders than 2014.2 However, the proportion of murders committed with guns has increased relative to other means like knives and fists. The U.S. population has also increased unevenly by at least 18 million since 2014.
For this reason, I favor comparing homicide rates over time. Here are some charts grouped by district/region that I promised as a companion to the state-level homicide counts reported in my 2025 mid-year update. The x-axis is the FHR and the states are ranked along the y-axis based on the size of the percent change in the FHR, from largest decrease to largest increase.
These analyses suggest gun violence is notably worse in 2025 compared to 2014:
Throughout the Deep South
In most of the South Atlantic (but not Florida)
In about half of Western states (especially New Mexico)
In Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin (driven by urban violence)
By contrast, there are lower rates of gun violence:
Throughout the Northeast
In much of the Mountain West (Utah, Nevada, Idaho)
Within select Rust Belt states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan)
There’s room for optimism in this mixed bag.
States are ordered by the size of the firearm homicide increase over the previous year, largest to smallest. The position of each state on the x-axis indicates the Firearm Homicide Rate (FHR) per 100,000 in either year. For instance, New Mexico’s FHR was about 10 per 100k in 2021, while Oregon’s was about 3 per 100k. Put differently, the states with the highest firearm homicide rates are places on the farthest right of the chart, while the states where rates increased the most are placed the highest up on the vertical axis.
Additionally, my 2014 data potentially undercount incidents due to a change in methodology adopted by Gun Violence Archive in 2015, when they expanded their sources and began more thoroughly cross-referencing with municipal and federal agency data.