A few years ago, Baltimore was easily one of the most dangerous cities in the country. Despite a plethora of anti-gun laws on the books, all because of Baltimore and its issues, the homicide rate managed to hit startling heights.
And over the last few years, it's dropped. It's dropped significantly, which is difficult for people to miss.
However, this year, the Trump administration has cut a lot of funding to a lot of programs, which were needed because we had money going to some seriously troubling places, including pronounced anti-gun efforts.
Now, though, we're being warned that the funding cuts will undermine the very programs responsible for Baltimore's drop in murder.
David Fitzgerald knows how tough it is to prevent gun violence. In 15 years working in some of Baltimore’s deadliest neighborhoods for a program called Safe Streets, he said, he’s defused hundreds of fights that could have led to a shooting.
The effort, part of Baltimore’s more than $100 million gun violence prevention plan, relies on staffers like Fitzgerald to build trust with people at risk of such violence and offer them resources like housing or food. Researchers believe these programs reduce gun deaths.
...
For years, violence intervention was the work of loosely organized, underfunded groups. Then gun violence spiked during the covid pandemic and the Biden administration and Congress poured in money to better integrate such programs within cities. It appeared to help: In Baltimore and beyond, gun violence has plummeted.
The number of homicides in the city dropped 41%, from more than 300 a year in 2021 to 201 in 2024, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland.
“Gun violence is a sticky, hard problem to solve,” said Daniel Webster, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions in Baltimore. “We’re getting it right finally.”
Now President Donald Trump’s administration has gutted funding for that work.
Webster said it could take years to untangle what led to the city’s gun violence drop. Among the factors, he said: the pandemic’s end, investments in violence intervention, improvements that have given police more legitimacy in neighborhoods, targeted prosecutions, and an aggressive effort to remove untraceable ghost guns.
“You need all of these systems working well to have systemic reductions in gun violence,” he said.
The Trump administration has slashed funding for gun violence prevention and research, cutting about $500 million in grants to organizations that support public safety.
In short, Trump is bad because he cut funding to these organizations, and some dude says every aspect of this system is essential, even if they don't have a clue exactly what's going on.
Of course, this piece is attributed to the Kaiser Health News so-called newsroom, which I've talked about before. It's an anti-gun newsroom that pushes a political agenda.
Bias doesn't inherently mean they're wrong, though, does it?
No, it doesn't. People can be biased and be right. It happens all the time. I like to think that I'm right plenty of times, and I'm biased as hell on gun issues, so the bias itself isn't the problem.
The issue is that they're letting their bias dictate the narrative completely, even to the point of downplaying other factors that may be playing a major role, as we can see in this bit from the Baltimore Banner:
Unique Garrett, president of the Shipley Hill Community Association, largely attributed it to grassroots organizing. That has centered around a “Peaceful Pink Park” that has served as a hub for events including community baby showers, where diapers, strollers and formula are made available, and a Father’s Day cookout.
“The people that are out here, these nonprofit organizations, have their own mentorship for these young Black adults in our community,” Garrett said. “They do more work than any city official, and I see it. I witness it.”
In the nearby Union Square neighborhood, Bif Browning, president of the local community association, said changes in how the Baltimore Police Department operates have made a difference.
Specifically, he cited redistricting, which unified the neighborhood under one chain of command, along with improved community policing under the current major, Michael Mercado.
“He and his team, they’re much better about talking to the community and gathering feedback from the ground up,” Browning said. “They reach out to us on a monthly basis, sometimes even more.”
Gun violence prevention experts might tell you that neither of them is wrong. Changes in how the city is policed have had a meaningful impact on the homicide rate, but those who view gun violence as a public health issue — a group that includes the city’s mayor — also believe there is a social element, a fatigue from decades of bloodshed, behind the steep decrease.
Now, understand that I don't have an issue with non-profit groups stepping in to try to address violence in their communities. I think that's a good and noble thing for people to do, if they're so inclined. If they're effective, fantastic.
But where I have an issue is with someone trying to give all of the credit to these programs and acting as if Trump cutting federal funding--not state or local funding, mind you, which is arguably where the money should be coming from considering it's a local issue--will create a downhill slide that will lead to more violence, even as they downplay the changes in law enforcement.
Plus, the downturn in violent crime isn't just in Baltimore. It's nationwide and started around the same time as the Bruen decision came out in 2023, which made "shall issue" the law of the land.
More guns on the streets are just as easy to find a correlation to the drop in crime as anything these groups have done, but somehow that keeps getting missed.
Funny, that.
Look, the truth of the matter is that the American taxpayers aren't the only people who can fund this, especially as my tax dollars going to address violence in Baltimore aren't doing anything to address violence here in my hometown. The same can be said of most of you, as well.
This idea that if the federal government doesn't fund a thing, then a thing simply cannot exist is absolute nonsense. If these non-profits are that vital to keeping the city safe, then let the city fund them.
But don't downplay the fact that the police are able to do their jobs more effectively, and are making targeted arrests, followed by actual prosecution, as a factor just to make your own preferred point, which is really just "orange man bad."
We're all sick of it.
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