| Dear Diogenes: How high is D.C.'s violent crime rate? After President Trump federalized the D.C. police force, Democrats argued that crime in D.C. wasn't serious enough to justify the move and that nothing needed to change. Because Democrats also want to make D.C. the 51st state, it's worth comparing the District's crime rate with both the states and other major cities. D.C.'s crime rate is severe. In one piece I published at The Federalist, I showed that D.C.'s murder rate is 169% higher than the most dangerous state and 523% higher than the average state. In another article at Real Clear Politics, I explained why Trump's actions will likely reduce D.C.'s crime. The data makes clear why D.C. police feel stretched so thin and why restrictions on their authority make the job harder. Even when police arrest criminals, prosecutors rarely pursue charges, and punishment is even less likely to follow. Steve Bannon's War Room hosted me four times in the past couple of weeks to discuss the president's federalization of police (here, here, here, and here). I also joined Sean Spicer's podcast, along with the national radio shows hosted by Hugh Hewitt and Wilkow Majority, to debate D.C.'s crime problem. Karoline Leavitt, who has 1.5 million followers on X, amplified my work twice—once by tweeting my article at The Federalist and again by highlighting my Real Clear Politics op-ed. These discussions all rest on the assumption that reported crime data is accurate. Yet police officers accuse the District of routinely downgrading crimes so they don't appear in the statistics. Despite D.C. politicians' denials, officers insist the manipulation isn't limited to one precinct. A more detailed breakdown of the crime data is available here. Before leaving this discussion, it is hard to ignore that the gun control groups, like the Brady Campaign, don't want law enforcement to protect people at the same time they don't want people to be able to protect themselves. And I would like to claim some credit for the behind the scenes maneuvering in the White House that cut the time for getting a concealed handgun permit in D.C. from over six months to two weeks. I wish that I could go into details, but I will just say that I have a very good contact in the White House. This past Monday, President Trump promised "I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS." Another op-ed at Real Clear Politics explains why his concerns are correct. We just completed our review of errors in the FBI's annual active shooting report. We posted a list of cases the FBI ignored where armed civilians stopped attacks, and we will soon release our full report showing how these omissions distort the FBI's overall numbers. The 2024 data leaves out even more cases than usual. My work on the biases of AI chatbots on gun control was discussed on John Solomon Reports and Iowa's Simon Conway Show. The failure of gun control and gun-free zones contributed to the mass public shootings in New York City and Fort Stewart continued to spark debate, with interviews on Oklahoma's KQOB, Las Vegas' KMZQ, and the national Armed American Radio show. Our research has also gotten extensive news coverage over the last two weeks at NewsMax, the Washington Examiner, and numerous other places. Regarding stories of defensive gun use, here is an instance of a woman shooting a man who had repeatedly abused and beaten her to protect herself and her children. As the police office in the video says, the woman "had no other choice but to defend herself and that is why people have guns." We have updated our list of defensive gun uses by people legally carrying concealed handguns for January 2025. If you haven't already seen it, please watch our new video with John Stossel, which covers our new research showing errors in the FBI's active shooting reports. For those who haven't already done so, if you would like to help us get the information out to others, please consider posting reviews of our website on the Google business page that we have set up. The more reviews people post, the more Google will feature our webpage in their searches. Thank you. We need help getting our research out. It doesn't do us any good to do all this work if people don't see it. If you have friends you think might find our emails interesting, please encourage them to sign up by sending them the link here. Thank you very much. We need your support to continue doing the work that we do. I don't think that there is any organization with as small of a budget that regularly produces as much as we do. Thank you very much. . Research . Op-eds . Recent Talks . Television/Podcast interviews . Radio interviews/Podcasts . Media Coverage . Amicus Brief . Televisions/Movie Show Bias on Guns . Defensive Gun Uses . Other Testimony . Other Crime Prevention Research Center 358 S 700 E, Ste B, B409, Salt Lake City, UT 84102
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