2025 was about as good a year regarding homicides as we've seen in quite a while. It's not that it was great, mind you, but the homicide rate dropped significantly compared to 2024, which was still down from 2020 and 2021. It was a good sign that we should all be happy about.
And, for the most part, folks are. Some are disappointed that they can't use the homicide rate for political gain, but then again, they're old hands at pushing a narrative regardless of what the statistics represent.
In Tucson, Arizona, they're pretty happy, too. They're celebrating the drop in gun-related homicides.
Tucson recorded a 19.5% drop in gun-related homicides last year, city officials told the Mayor and Council during a study session Tuesday, crediting early success from the Safe City Initiative’s coordinated violence prevention efforts.
Officials said the decline reflects a coordinated strategy combining community intervention, centralized investigations and hospital-based outreach aimed at interrupting cycles of violence.
Assistant City Manager Liz Morales framed the strategy as a deliberate shift away from siloed responses. “Gun violence is not inevitable,” Morales said. “Cities like ours that invest in coordinated evidence-based strategies do see results.”
“I know that many of us have some sort of story in terms of gun violence done to our family or friends or people that we know,” Mayor Regina Romero said. She requested an update on the Safe City Initiative in honor of national Gun Violence Survivors week.
Romero announced the launch of Safe City Initiative in October, described as “Tucson’s commitment to addressing unsheltered homelessness, the opioid public health crisis, violent crime, and improving quality of life for Tucson residents,” in Tuesday’s meeting memo.
Oscar Medina, the city’s first violence prevention and intervention program manager, reported that outreach teams reached 899 residents across four Violence Interruption and Vitalization Action, or VIVA, neighborhoods last year through canvassing, resource fairs, community cleanups, and safety workshops. The Office of Violence Prevention and Intervention is developing a multi-year roadmap through 2030 that will align with the city’s Safe City Initiative and Prosperity Initiative.
That drop is good, but I'm bothered by the talk being about gun-related homicides.
Why? Because, from what I can tell, the total homicide rate dropped about the same amount. According to the Real Time Crime Index, Tucson has seen a 19.7 percent drop in all-cause homicides over the last 12 months. That suggests the drop has continued, but also that it wasn't just from gun-related homicides being down.
Homicides are down across the board, and since Arizona hasn't become anti-gun lately, even if some there aren't thrilled by that fact, and so the interventions we've seen in Tucson have all addressed violence in the city, not guns.
And, as a result, homicides are down in general, including those using knives, bats, hammers, hands and feet, etc.
Kind of what I and others have been saying for years now.
The issue was never about guns. Take those away, and the homicides will just happen with something else. As it is, our "non-gun" homicide rates are typically higher than those of other developed nations' total homicide rates.
In Tucson, they focused on gun-related homicides, but they're ignoring that whatever is happening went beyond those involving firearms. Everything went down. That's a win. No one can dispute that being a win.
Unfortunately, that's never going to make the mainstream media's news cycle because it's not as titillating as "gun crime."
Heaven forbid that people find out that there are murders that don't involve a firearm, or that everything is essentially related, regardless of what weapons are available.
Then again, what can we expect from the media or urban law enforcement officials? It's not like they're known to be honest about these sorts of things.
