It was a standard talking point of the Biden White House that violent crime had dropped by record levels under the Biden-Harris administration, attributed in part to its support of gun control measures. In 2024, for example, President Biden - the most anti-Second Amendment president ever – boasted that “violent crime fell to one of the lowest levels in more than 50 years.”
Yet, the vast majority of Americans continue to view crime as a serious problem. According to a poll in late August, eight in ten respondents agreed that crime is a “major issue” in large cities (including 68% of Democrats), and two-thirds of respondents described it as a major issue nationwide.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Jeffrey H. Anderson, the former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, examined the evidence with respect to these competing narratives using the data in latest National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The survey, released last month, is based on information on non-fatal crimes from July 1, 2023 to November 30, 2024 (homicides aren’t included, as the survey is based on interviews with victims).
The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics has conducted the NCVS since 1973. The survey bypasses FBI crime data and instead relies on interviews with a nationally representative sample of some 240,000 individuals. The information collected tracks the frequency and type of crime experienced, including incidents that have not been reported to police. The latest survey noted that less than half of all violent victimizations (and only 50% of “stranger violence” crimes, specifically) were reported to law enforcement; the rest aren’t counted in police or FBI statistics.
The most disturbing detail Anderson found (“the most overlooked U.S. crime story in recent years”) was the drastic uptick in violent crime rates in urban areas. In 2019, he writes, “the rate of violent crime in urban areas was roughly identical to the rate nationwide.” By 2024, the urban rate of violent crime “increased by 61%” and was “46% higher than the nationwide rate and 104% higher—more than double—the rural rate.” The observed increase in violent crime in suburban and rural areas over the same period (4% and 2%, respectively) was so minor that it wasn’t statistically significant.
In terms of numbers by location, the urban violent crime rate (per 1,000 persons age 12 or older) was 21.1 in 2019, dropped to 19.0 in the pandemic year of 2020, and subsequently rose to 24.5 (2021), 33.4 (2022), 29.6 (2023) and 34.0 (2024). The suburban violent crime rate, by comparison, is currently close to what it was in 2019 (22.3 in 2019, and 23.3 in both 2023 and 2024). The highest rural violent crime rate over the same time was 16.7, less than half of the urban rate.
Anderson’s article pointed out the property crime rates in cities, suburbs and rural areas have likewise grown apart significantly in that period. “In 2019 the property-crime rate was 51% higher in urban areas than it was nationwide; in 2024 it was 86% higher. The number of property-crime victimizations in 2024 per 1,000 households was 181.6 in urban areas, 96.1 in suburban areas, and 48.3 in rural areas.”
Anderson concludes that “[w]hen violent crime doesn’t rise in suburban or rural areas but rises 61% in urban areas, that should be big news.” It’s not, perhaps because in the many jurisdictions that continue to be governed by politicians disinclined to enforce the law against violent criminals, surging crime has become the new normal.
President Trump, however, has made a commitment to safe communities through vigorous law enforcement. An Executive Order signed in April set out his administration’s steadfast commitment “to empowering State and local law enforcement to firmly police dangerous criminal behavior and protect innocent citizens.” The August poll found that a majority of the public (53%) approve of how the president has so far responded to urban crime, by deploying federal resources to assist police in large cities and other measures.
There is reason to believe that the coming months will see a renewed push for gun control in the context of public safety, to counter the popularity of the Trump administration’s stance on fighting crime.
A private polling memo reportedly commissioned jointly by gun-control group Giffords and House Majority Forward, a nonprofit aligned with House Democratic leadership, has flagged crime/public safety as a critical issue in the leadup to the 2026 midterm election. According to a Politico report titled “Democrats see a path to flipping the crime debate,” the battleground-district survey shows that “89 percent of the 1,200 likely voters surveyed want their Congress member to take steps to keep them safe, but only 38 percent trust Democrats over Republicans with that task.” The same group, unsurprisingly, also preferred Republicans to Democrats on crime control and violent crime abatement.
In an attempt to redirect and reverse this adverse public perception, the Democratic party’s forthcoming messaging is expected to change to an acknowledgement that crime is a problem and to highlight the party’s stance on gun control – “strengthening firearm background checks” and criticizing “the Trump administration’s attempts to roll back firearm regulations.” According to Politico, Giffords, House Majority Forward and Global Strategy Group pollsters were “briefing top House Democrats, frontline candidates and party committees about the poll, which was conducted in July… angling to revamp Democrats’ crime messaging.”
This pivot to gun control as the solution to all violent crime is as predictable as it is pointless. If nothing else, the startling rise in urban crime rates under America’s most gung-ho gun-control president has been ample evidence of that.
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