US homicide rate dropped, but Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy overstates effect of gun law

Samantha Putterman
·8 min read
13
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., touted the value of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in reducing urban homicides.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., touted the value of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in reducing urban homicides.
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Chris Murphy

Statement: The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act led to a “12% reduction in urban homicides in this country.”

President Joe Biden’s allies are countering claims that his age is hurting his ability to govern. Sen. Chris Murphy said the president’s acuity helped create a law that cut deadly gun violence.

"I worked with (Biden) on the bipartisan gun bill. He was involved in every step of that process," Murphy, D-Conn., said Feb. 11 on CBS’ "Face the Nation." "And what has happened since we passed that bill? A 12% reduction in urban homicides in this country."

Murphy is referring to the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which Biden signed into law in June 2022 after mass shootings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and in Buffalo, N.Y. The legislation combined gun safety provisions with mental health and school security resources and was the first gun control measure from Congress in nearly three decades.

Criminologists and gun policy experts confirmed that U.S. homicides dropped 10% to 12% over the past year. But that is a reduction from big spikes in violent crime during the COVID-19 pandemic, and experts said the change probably involves several factors.

Violent crime is down from pandemic-era peak

The FBI won’t release its 2023 national crime statistics until the fall, but experts said preliminary data matches up with Murphy’s statistic.

"Urban" homicides, as he put it, are those committed in densely populated cities, where crime is typically more concentrated.

Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics, estimated that homicides in 2023 were down about 12% in 211 cities with available data. Seventy-one percent of those cities saw a decline. Asher said that would be one of the largest single-year homicide drops — if not the largest — since U.S. crime recordkeeping began.

Murphy referred to the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act as a "gun" bill, and although his statistic covered all urban homicides, the vast majority of homicides in the U.S. involve firearms — about 81% in 2021, according to Pew Research Center. 

The Gun Violence Archive, an independent nonprofit, estimated that deaths and injuries from gun violence declined 8% to 10% in 2023 compared with 2022.

In its 2023 analysis, the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, found that the number of homicides in the 32 cities it studied was 10% lower than in the previous year.

The decline follows the group’s 2022 analysis, which found that homicide counts for that year were 4% lower than in 2021.

These declines come with a huge caveat: They represent drops from big COVID-19-era violent crime spikes in 2020 and 2021. Overall, preliminary data shows the 2023 homicide rate is about 18% higher than it was in 2019.

What the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act did

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act provided $750 million to help states implement crisis intervention programs and "red flag laws" designed to take firearms from people temporarily if they pose a danger to themselves or others. The act also closed domestic violence loopholes, improved background checks, made gun trafficking illegal and outlawed what is known as "straw purchases," when someone buys a gun for someone else. It also increased funding for mental health and school safety.

Because of the legislation, the Justice Department has brought gun trafficking charges against more than 200 people, The Washington Post reported in December; about 80 were charged with violating the straw purchase provision. The law has led to the seizure of more than 1,300 guns from suspected traffickers between mid-July 2022 and late October 2023, according to a report by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

Biden touted the law’s impact in a Jan. 4 press release, saying the enhanced background checks led to the denial of "more than 500 illegal gun purchases by people under 21 years old."

Several factors probably contributed to the decline, experts say

Criminologists and data analysts told us that pinpointing the reasons crime data changes is challenging at best and impossible at worst. The new law probably helped, they said, but should not be credited as the predominant driver.

"There are many theories about what is driving these changes, but I have not seen research that explains them convincingly, and I have seen no research, convincing or otherwise, that has attempted to estimate the effect of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act on 2023 urban homicides," Andrew Morral, senior behavioral scientist at the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan think tank, and director of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, told PolitiFact.

"Could it have had the effect of reducing urban homicides? Yes," Morral wrote in an email. "Are there other factors likely influencing recent declines in homicide rates? Very likely."

Criminologists said the declines in the past two years probably relate to a confluence of factors, including the fading tensions surrounding George Floyd’s murder by police and the easing of the pandemic’s social disruptions, restrictions and anxieties. Cities also aggressively undertook violence-reduction strategies to respond to homicide spikes.

Experts also noted that the decline is uneven throughout the country, and some cities have experienced more homicides.

Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, noted a "staggering increases" in 2023 homicides in Washington; Memphis, Tenn.; and Oakland, Calif.

"If this law is causing gun homicides to come down, then what happened in these cities? If national legislation is causing the decline, it should be doing it everywhere, but it’s not, Piquero said. "Could what those monies were used for have influenced some of the trends? Maybe, but it’s virtually impossible to measure a national aggregate change and some law and how it deals with things at the local level."

Still, the law’s advocates contend that it enables the federal government to identify and charge the most violent offenders, thereby supporting local law enforcement efforts to reduce homicides.

PolitiFact's ruling

Murphy said the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act led to a 12% reduction in urban homicides in 2023.

Preliminary data shows urban homicides across the country decreased about 12% in 2023.

But the data ignores that the decline came after violent crime spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, preliminary data shows the 2023 homicide rate is likely to be about 18% higher than in 2019.

Criminologists said the law probably helped drive down the figures in 2023, but they noted other factors, including the easing of the pandemic’s social disruptions and the way cities responded to homicide spikes.

Murphy’s claim is partly accurate but leaves out important information. We rate it Half True.

Our sources

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: US murder rate dropped, but Sen. Chris Murphy overstates gun law effect