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Americans are savages who need troops in the street and guns at the ready 
to walk to the corner store.   The entire country is a gun infested sewer.  
There are no other G20 countries who put troops in the streets to control 
the serfs.  And look at that Red State Murder Rate!


https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3274797-we-have-a-murder-problem-in-
america-especially-in-red-states/

For the last two years, the nation has been awash in news accounts about 
soaring violent crime and murder in cities and states run by Democrats. 
That narrative is ubiquitous, particularly in conservative media, where 
Democratic mayors are routinely called out and excoriated for turning a 
blind eye to crime. That story is half right and half — to be charitable — 
lazy and wrong.

Let’s dispatch with the part that is correct. We have a murder problem in 
America, with homicides up sharply in recent years reversing long-term 
trends. In addition, many cities with Democratic mayors and governors have 
experienced dramatic murder spikes.


Now, for the rest of the story. In a report Third Way recently released, we 
found that murder was much more prevalent in red states than blue states. 
That’s right. In 2020, homicide rates were a stunning 40 percent higher in 
the 25 states that former President Donald Trump won compared to the 25 won 
by current President Joe Biden. Of the 10 states with the highest 2020 per 
capita murder rates in America, eight of them not only voted for Trump in 
2016 and 2020, they voted Republican in every presidential election this 
century.

Mississippi — a state that neither conjures up weak on crime images nor 
Democratic officeholders — topped the charts with a 2020 murder rate twice 
that of blue Illinois, thrice that of bluer California, and four times that 
of bluest New York. The red states of Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama and 
Missouri rounded out the top five and each had murder rates at least six 
times Massachusetts, four times New Jersey and just shy of twice that of 
Michigan. These blue states are home to the “crime-is-out-of-control” 
cities you read about daily — Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, 
Newark and Detroit. They generate the headlines, the outrage and the 
political backlash.

Yet, media coverage is essentially mum about Lexington, Kentucky, which has 
set back-to-back murder records, has a homicide rate twice that of New York 
City and has a Republican mayor. Tulsa and Oklahoma City have Republican 
mayors, a Republican governor and murder rates that dwarf that of Los 
Angeles. Jacksonville was the murder capital of Florida in 2020 with its 
Republican mayor, governor and a stratospheric homicide rate that if it 
were matched in New York City would’ve added more than 1,000 murders that 
year.

And to top it off, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) 
San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-
Calif.) Bakersfield, the largest city in Kern County and one with a 
Republican mayor — with overwhelming Trump support and not a whiff of 
flirtation with defund the police movements. In fact, the murder capital of 
California for six years running is sleepy Kern County, 130 miles from Los 
Angeles and 306 miles from San Francisco, the two California locales most 
often associated with the crime-is-out-of-control national headlines that 
have dominated U.S. crime  and political coverage.

The causes for crime and murder are complicated and intersectional and so 
is its relationship to political party. Since four out of five murders are 
by firearms, higher homicide rates tend to be in places with extensive gun 
ownership. Meanwhile, firearms purchases have exploded with Americans 
purchasing an unprecedented 80 million guns in the last two years. Add to 
that gun owning households are twice as likely to be Republicans. Taken 
together, this could conceivably explain some of the bias toward more 
lethal crime in red states.

Mostly, however, crime is ripe for another type of bias: toward 
demagoguery. The Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown 
Jackson were punctuated with GOP attacks labeling her soft on crime despite 
endorsements from the Fraternal Order of Police and nation’s police chiefs. 
Ironically, some of the most outrageous attacks came from Sens. Tom Cotton 
(R-Ark.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who represent states with murder rates 
among the worst in the nation. 

This underscores that there is rarely a national crime discussion in 
America that is civil, inquisitive and holistic. And that is what makes the 
media slant that focuses almost exclusively on urban blue state crime as 
inexplicable and frustrating as it is lazy and off.

If the yardstick is homicide, Republicans do a far better job of talking 
about stopping crime than actually stopping it — and it seems much of the 
press seems to buy it.