New CDC Data Shows a Substantial Decline in Gun Violence in 2024
Gun Violence Declines are Accelerating and Greater (Local) State Capacity is the Reason
The Centers for Disease Control has released the full provisional data series for homicide in 2024. The data show a large decline in homicides in general, and large declines in gun homicides specifically.
Table 1 summarizes the monthly trend data for 2018-2024. There were 19,141 homicides in the US in 2019, the year before the pandemic, and 24,576 in 2020. The 28.4% increase in homicide from 2019 to 2020 was the largest one-year increase in recorded history, dating back to 1960, and was almost three times larger than the prior biggest one-year increase. Homicide in the US went up again in 2021, to more than 26,000. This is roughly the same number of homicides as in 1993, which was the prior worst year for homicides in America (although there were 80 million fewer Americans in 1993, so the homicide rate was much higher).
Early in 2022, the pattern reversed, and homicide has been declining in every subsequent year. By the end of 2024, the new data show 20,157 homicides, only about 1,000 more than in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
Importantly, the rate of decline in all homicides and gun homicides is increasing. From 2021 to 2022, the decline was 4.5%. From 2022 to 2023, homicides declined 8.1%. And in the most recent data, 2024 homicides were 11.7% lower than 2023.
As I wrote about last year, the COVID homicide spike and decline have been almost entirely about increases in gun homicides. The new data again show that the overall decline is mainly due to changes in gun homicides and not declines in other kinds of homicide.
Causal Factors
So, what is driving the gun homicide decline? This week, Ashley Wu and Tim Arango have a thoughtful story in the New York Times where they explore explanations for the decline. My take, in that article and here, is that this was mostly a story of state capacity. Or more specifically, a decline and then an increase in the number of on-the-ground local government employees directly interacting with young men most at-risk of violence and victimization.
It isn’t just that Covid disrupted people’s routines — it disrupted the fabric of support,” Mr. Roman said. Local government employs teachers, counselors, coaches, police officers, social workers and other service providers — the people who often engage directly with those at risk of committing crimes or becoming victims. As the work force recovered, he argued, crime lessened.
One idea that continues to circulate is that all of this decline is just some rubber band effect: COVID stretched the band and now it has simply snapped back. There is an implicit pessimism in this idea, that somehow even in the best of times, with plummeting gun violence rates, the best we can hope for is homeostasis. I think this idea is overly glum. I would point to two pieces of data.
For one, if you find the state capacity explanation to be compelling, you would note that local state capacity, as measured by the number of local government employees, is currently at an all-time high. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that as of June 2025, there were 15.274 million local government employees. The previous high was 14.901 in November 2019. Nothing in the current pattern suggests the general trend in growth in local capacity is changing.
Second, there’s a little bit of an ‘end of history’ fallacy in some of the explanations of the crime decline. Even with the 2024 CDC homicide data in hand, our latest official data is quite outdated in a rapidly changing environment. And to be sure, homicide rates are rapidly changing! Simply looking at the data through 2024 and noting that we are getting close to pre-pandemic levels ignores more recent data which shows homicides in the US to be well below 2019.
The CDC data is half a year old, and homicide and gun homicide continue to decline. While the official data lags, as the reliability of the data is subject to quality control, real life continues. And in the real world, in the first half of 2025, violence continues to plunge.
The same New York Times article cites data from the Real Time Crime Index that “shows that murders are down 20 percent through May, compared with the same period in 2024.” A survey of the member law enforcement agencies of the Major Cities Chiefs Association also shows a 20% decline in homicides in the first three months of this year.
To illustrate this decline, I have simply imputed a 20% decline for each of the first six months of 2025 compared to the same month in 2024. The image is striking.
What is readily apparent is that when provisional 2025 data are added to the graphic, homicide and gun homicide rates are well below pre-pandemic levels. February 2025 likely saw fewer homicides than any month between 2018 and 2025. And as the US enters the summer months, June homicide levels are well below past summer peaks. Overall, 2025 homicide levels are on track for the lowest levels of the 21st century, reaching levels not seen since the 1960s.
What would it mean to have a 20% decline in homicides for the year? It would mean a little more than 16,000 homicides in 2025, which is well below the 18,830 homicides in 2019. If homicide rates suddenly revert to 2024 levels from July 1 onwards, the first half declines of 20% will result in a year that is down 10%. Which means that homicides in the US are already below 2019 levels. Again, this is not a forecast: this has already happened.
What Comes Next?
A little more than one year ago, I had the good fortune to co-author an article in Vital City with the inimitable Liz Glazer, titled, The Golden Age of Crime Reduction is Now. I believe that article has held up well to the passage of time. The title conveys the central premise of the article, and the argument we made about why this was happening and how to sustain these gains was about improving state capacity.
The golden age is now, and two forces promise further progress to come: the structure of how great cities work, and a dawning recognition that the causes of crime are many, so the solutions must be too. It is not that crime must be low for a city to work, but that a city must work for crime to be low.
While there remains some disagreement about the mechanisms that caused gun violence to first spike and then plummet, there now seems to be a consensus that the decline was national in scope. For those who do not study crime, this is probably not a shocking revelation: tectonic national forces can simultaneously change the course of violence in many cities at once. For local officials accustomed to discussing their city in isolation, there remains considerable resistance to this notion.
Homicide is down, gun homicide is down, and this is a nationwide event. But sustaining this decline will be a local endeavor. Building greater local government capacity to work directly with—to help!—those most at-risk of violence and victimization is the key ingredient. This support can take many forms and should take many forms. But it is clear that we need to do that hard work, and do it everywhere, to sustain these remarkable gains.
Now on to other pressing matters…
$15 Cheesesteak
I received a missive this week announcing a new cheesesteak restaurant in the Philly suburbs. Not exactly man bites dog news, but Cheesesteak restaurants are not in fact piled one on top of another like Russian nesting dolls out on the Main Line. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn would probably have had trouble finding a joint willing to squeeze a tube of wiz onto their Amorosa roll unless they wanted to rattle the ol’ Duesenberg down to Havertown. I suppose they coulda went down to Wawa, which were probably on every corner even then, and there is nothing wrong with a Wawa cheesesteak (fight me), but they would likely lament the commercialization of our post-industrial decline personified by Wawa.
So, it’s a welcome addition.
Though the article happily notes that cheesesteaks start at $15. $15! Maybe I am suffering from old-people derangement syndrome and looking at the world through mauve colored lenses, but that seems like a lot for a food of the people. But maybe cheesesteaks are now a status symbol. Perhaps today the thing to do is to put on your Derek Guy-approved suit with hand-sewn brogues, delicately cradle your cheesesteak between two well-manicured hands, crook your pinkie, and dab at the corners of your mouth with a Hermès scarf. I say, if so, so be it. Philly always leads the way.
New Category: I Wish I Had Written This
A glorious introspection. I sent this to my Dad, who is aging guilelessly, and he responded that he thought it brought more intellectual heft than my usual fare. I had to point out that, in fact, I remain bereft of intellectual heft and someone more gifted with prose had authored the piece. Still, that’s high praise from Dad. Check it out.
Very interesting article. I saw recently that homicide in Baltimore has plummeted, credited to diversion work with those most likely to be involved. I’m in the UK, and what is happening here is perhaps similar to in US. ‘Conventional’ crime continues to fall - homicides are down here too, from a much lower level of course. But a) a large section of the public believe crime is rising and getting more serious. And b) the public distrust statistics, especially official ones. Time and again in the official survey that is used here to track crime trends, more people say they are experiencing less crime themselves, yet they also think more crime is happening- elsewhere, to others. The issue now is not so much about actual safety (how many homicides are there?), but what is the perception of the homicides risk (do I feel less safe?). Policing and city authorities might succeed in cutting homicides, but they will fail if people do not believe it.