When the FBI's official crime stats come out later this year, we're likely to learn that 2025 saw a record-setting decline in homicides nationwide, and that the overall homicide rate is the lowest it's been since the FBI started keeping track in 1960.
That welcome trend seems to be continuing in 2026, with criminologist Jeff Asher's Real Time Crime Index showing another 22% decline in homicides through the first two months of the year.
Still, there are some outliers, and one of them is Denver, Colorado. Last year Denver saw a 48% decrease in homicides, with Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas pointing to "a mix of faster police response, medical intervention, and long-term prevention strategies." This year, though, homicides are trending in the wrong direction.
Data provided by police show that total crime, violent crime and reported gun-related offenses are down compared with both last year and recent averages. At the same time, homicides have risen compared with this point last year, with 17 reported so far in 2026, up from 10 during the same period in 2025.
Last year, Democrats in the Colorado legislature added several new restrictions to the spate of gun control laws that have been put in place since 2011, but they don't appear to be having any kind of impact on homicides in the state's biggest city. That's hardly a surprise, though, given that violent crime overall climbed steadily over most of the past 15 years.
In May, 2024 the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice released its report documenting crime rates between 2013 and 2022. Over that ten year period, violent crime rose by 61%, homicides increased by 94%, and aggravated assaults grew 88%.
During that same ten-year period, Colorado instituted a number of gun control laws, starting with "universal" background checks and a ban on "large capacity" magazines in 2013. That was followed by a "red flag" law in 2019, and in 2021, new storage mandates for gun owners, a "lost or stolen" reporting requirement, and an end to the state's firearm preemption law.
Despite having almost a dozen anti-2A measures implemented over that time period, the homicide rate nearly doubled, and violent crime rates soared ever upward.
Supposedly, overall violent crimes are down in Denver this year, even though homicides have increased by 70%, according to the CBS affiliate. Oddly, the Denver PD's homicide dashboard reports 16, not 17 homicides, but even that is a 60% increase in murders. Non-fatal shootings have declined by 12% this year, according to police, though in raw numbers we're talking about five fewer incidents over the first 3 1/2 months of the year, which is hardly anything to write home about.
The number of gun-involved homicides is also higher this year than at the same point in 2025, which is yet another sign that Colorado's restrictive gun laws aren't preventing violent offenders from getting their hands on a firearm. In the first four months of 2025 there were 10 homicides involving a firearm. We still have almost two weeks left in April, but Denver has already seen 12 homicides where a gun was involved.
Of course, none of these statistics will matter to the anti-gun Democrats who keep ramming gun control laws through the legislature. They may use crime and public safety as a rationale for these laws, but the real goal is to prevent and prohibit lawful gun ownership. If violent crime falls at the same time, all the better, but that's clearly not necessary for them to continue their crackdown on the exercise of our Second Amendment rights.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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