It’s another year in our Nation’s Capital and it’s time for the Old Colonel to once again analyze the 2023 homicide statistics for DC and the immediately adjacent suburbs. At the beginning of every new year the Washington Post (WaPo) publishes the homicide statistics for Washington, DC but no longer compile stats for the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Hence, the Old Colonel cannot publish his analysis until much later in the year when the local police departments finally release their homicide statistics around June. Using the WaPo data, local police statistics and the Census Bureau’s latest estimated 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 2023 results:
To their credit, this year the WaPo did a very
comprehensive report and analysis of homicides and you can read it at:
The WaPo reported there were 274 confirmed 2023
homicide victims ranging from infants to octogenarians giving DC the fifth
highest murder rate among the nations biggest cities and more than 90 percent
of the killings were by gunfire. To
illustrate the human dimension of the violence, The WaPo compiled a
comprehensive list of the casualties — a month-by-month tally of who the
victims were, how they died and where — while also examining the broader trends
of the city’s 2023 homicide crisis. With a rate of 40 homicides per 100,000
residents, the District was deadlier than 55 of the country’s 60 most populous
cities, behind only New Orleans, Cleveland, Baltimore and Memphis. The entire
WaPo article is at the above link and is eye opening so well worth reading.
Again this year, any WaPo reader so naïve as
to believes the myth that onerous gun laws yield safer communities need look no
further than these stats to be disabused of that fantasy. This above
graphic clearly shows the breathtaking disparity in homicide rates among DC
where guns are almost completely banned and the adjacent Virginia suburbs where
criminals run the risk of being confronted by a law abiding citizen who just
might have a gun of their own.
The FACT is a DC
resident, where firearms are virtually impossible to own, is almost 28 times
more likely to be a homicide victim then one of us “Gun Tottin” Virginians fortunate enough to live in a state where gun
ownership for self-protection is almost unrestricted. Even a Marylander with their
very restrictive gun laws is 5.5 times less likely to be a homicide victim than
a DC resident. Much better than DC but a Marylander is still over 5 times more
likely to be a homicide victim than one of us Virginia Gun Totters!
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. The act
treats street thugs up to age 25 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.” See the below article “District of Crime”
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.
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 marksmanship 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 and are not so anxious to attack law-abiding
Virginia citizens as they might just be "packing some heat" of their
won. Seems that’s what the Homicide
Numbers tell us!
“District of Crime”: Shocking Case Characteristic of DC’s “Woke”
Approach to Violence
When a reasonable person finds it
impossible to take anti-gun big city politicians and their professed “need” for
more gun control seriously, maybe it’s stories like this one from Washington,
D.C. that play a role. On 8 May 2024, District of Columbia CBS affiliate WUSA
published a story with the astounding headline “Prosecutors
say he emptied an AR-15 rifle into a public DC street. A judge granted him
pre-trial release.”
According to the item, prosecutors
allege that on 22 April 2024 an 18-year-old went into the middle of a public
street in Southeast D.C. with an AR-15 and fired 26 shots at a moving motor
vehicle. The article pointed out that the young adult has been “charged with
assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a gun during a violent crime.
Both are felonies.”
Despite the alleged outrageous conduct,
the accused was granted pre-trial release. The article explained, “After [the
accused] was initially detained, Judge Lloyd Nolan granted a public defender’s
motion for pre-trial release, placing [the accused] on home detention in
Maryland with GPS monitoring and a stay-away order from the other people in the
car.”
Lest anyone think that a lack of
sufficient evidence may have played a role, the incident was reportedly caught
on video by no less than three cameras. WUSA obtained two of the videos, and
readers are encouraged to watch the shocking footage here.
Summing up the situation, one
neighborhood resident told the media outlet, “There is no accountability. We
are living in the District of Crime.”
Setting aside the present incident,
law-abiding gun owners get understandably frustrated when the same
jurisdictions braying for more gun control take a soft touch with those who
misuse firearms to harm others. The situation is even more galling when that
jurisdiction is Washington, D.C. The federal enclave’s local government operates
at the pleasure of the federal government. When the federal government uses its vast powers to
target innocuous gun owners throughout the nation while refusing to adequately
confront actual
violent crime in their own enclave,
people have a right to be upset and a right to question the motives of those
pushing ever greater gun control.
WaPo Homicide
Tracker temporarily unavailable as we
work on an updated version - for over 3 yrs
For many years the WaPo had a website that
tracked on a map all the homicides in DC and the surrounding jurisdictions in
any given year at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/homicides/
This was the description of the website;
“Tracking D.C.-area homicides
An updated map of homicides in the District and
its suburbs, including Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Fairfax
County, Prince William County, Loudoun County and jurisdictions within these
counties,”
In mid 2020 the WaPo suspended posting the
website with this explanation:
“This page is temporarily unavailable as
we work on an updated version.”
“Temporarily” for the WaPo means 3+ years.
Before the WaPo dropped the whole database,
they dropped the race and age of the victims but continued to map the locations
of the homicides, and listed the weapons used. Each year in early January the
Old Colonel would do an analysis of the statistics comparing jurisdictions and
each year the Stats showed that the stricter the gun laws the more the
homicides. Apparently, that didn’t fit the WaPo narrative so I’m guessing that’s
why the WaPo took the website down.