Again in 2020, Washington DC Has Another Decade Record Breaking Number of Murders Breaking the Record Set Just Last Year

It’s another January in our Nation’s Capital and it’s time for the Old Colonel to once again analyze the 2020 homicide statistics. At the beginning of every new year the Washington Post (WaPo) publishes the homicide statistics for Washington, DC and the surrounding adjacent Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Using the WaPo data and the Census Bureau 2020 population numbers, the Old Colonel calculates the homicide rates for DC and the adjacent Maryland and Virginia jurisdictions and does a quick analysis of his own. This table displays the 2020 results:

Of course the WaPo also does its own analysis and you can read theirs at:

Homicides in D.C. hit 16-year high; shootings also have spiked https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/homicides-rise-washington/2020/12/31/59dd659e-3953-11eb-bc68-96af0daae728_story.html 

The 198 homicides in 2020 makes it the deadliest year in DC since 2004. It’s a 236% increase in homicides over the 2012 number (84) and 171% jump over just three years ago (116) in 2017. Also, more than 920 people were shot in DC in 2020, a 64 percent increase from just three years ago.

The stats once again clearly demonstrated that any WaPo reader so naïve as to believes the myth that onerous gun laws yield safer communities need look no further than these WaPo stats to be disabused of that fantasy. The FACT is a DC resident, where firearms are virtually impossible to own, is over 17 times more likely to be a homicide victim then one of us Gun Tottin Virginians in the adjacent suburbs who is fortunate enough to live in a state where gun ownership for self-protection is almost unrestricted. Even a Marylander, with very restrictive gun laws, is 4.65 times less likely to be a homicide victim than a DC resident; much better than DC but a Marylander is still 3.68 times more likely to be a homicide victim than one of us Virginia Gun Totters!

This above graphic clearly shows the breathtaking disparity in homicide rates among the adjacent Virginia suburbs and the DC or Maryland jurisdictions that not only don’t have the death penalty but where criminals have little chance of being confronted by a law abiding citizen who just might just have a gun of their own. Of course, now that both Houses of the Virginia Legislature and the Offices of Governor Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General are controlled by Liberal “criminal coddling” Democrats who would rather protect murderers then murder victims, there is a movement afoot to abolish the Death Penalty and turn Virginia into another DC.

Contributing to the DC problem is their model for “punishing” criminals as embodied in the DC Youth Rehabilitation Act which routinely puts youthful murderers back on the street in record time. Now the DC Council wants to “fix” the act to treat street thugs up to age 25 instead of the present 22 as “misunderstood” kids that didn’t really mean to commit murder with a firearm so they should be released on their own recognizance until they have killed at least three people. Then, in the unlikely event they are even caught or ever prosecuted, they should be “rehabilitated” for a couple of years in a group home and then released back into the general population to put into practice what they learned in “rehab.”

Another recent WaPo article noted that only about half of the DC homicides are even solved and that 60% of DC homicide offenders caught had a previous gun arrest and were either out on “no cash” bail or on probation for a gun offense. Also, the vast majority of homicide victims are Black males.

So what was the DC Council’s immediate solution to the problem? They stripped $15 million from the $500 million police budget which will reduce the size of the 3,700-member department. Another “woke” DC Council initiative which recently passed provides for the early release of hundreds of violent gun offenders. The DC Police Union assesses this “enlightened” piece of legislation “has sent us back two decades in reducing homicides.”

Obviously, DC officials don’t care much about a bunch of street thugs killing each other but what’s intolerable is they should care about the number of innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. This is obviously a marksmanship training problem so they should amend the law so instead of the present DC “catch and release” policy for perpetrators of gun violence, they should be required to complete a shooting course to improve their aim during “rehab” so they only hit the other thugs they are aiming at. 

In conclusion, the statistics clearly demonstrate that contrary to liberal rhetoric, it is an “inconvenient truth” that “guns actually do make us safer.” Ask any citizen who has been directed to “shelter in place” because a crazed killer was loose in their neighborhood how they feel about owning a gun and I’ll bet the overwhelming majority wished they had one. Could it be that homicidal maniacs would much rather commit their crimes in jurisdictions like DC and Maryland without the death penalty and are not so anxious to attack law-abiding Virginia citizens as they might be "packing heat?" Seems that’s what the Homicide Numbers tell us!

Added - 2121 DC-VA-MD Comparison Table