NYTimes Investigation Into Plummeting Homicide Rates Kicks Off With an Odd Choice

Though the FBI’s official statistics won’t be available for a few more months, based on all available data it sure looks like 2025 saw a massive decline in homicide rates, to the point that the national per capital homicide rate will likely be the lowest since the FBI started keeping track in 1960. 

That’s definitely a newsworthy story, so when I saw that the New York Times was doing a deep dive on the historic decline, I was curious to see what the paper would come up with. I was left scratching my head, though, at reporter Shayla Colon’s decision to kick off the paper’s coverage with a profile of Camden, New Jersey. 

I’ve written about the city before. When I met my late wife in 1996, she was living in the city, which was the murder capital of the United States at the time… despite (or maybe because of) New Jersey’s restrictive gun laws. And it’s true that Camden has seen major improvements since then. But the decline in violent crime started well over a decade ago, which makes it extremely odd that Colon would highlight the city when profiling the major drop in homicides in most U.S. cities last year. 

As Colon notes, homicides in Camden have plunged 83% since 2012, which was its deadliest year on record. Much of the credit has been given to replacing the city’s beleaguered police department with a countywide department, but that’s hardly unknown information. People have been writing about the remarkable drop in Camden’s violent crime for years now. 

Colon’s piece features some unusual reporting. It consists entirely of quotes and comments from Camden residents, officials, and academics who credit a variety of things for the city’s turnaround; more police, more community violence intervention programs, tearing down abandoned homes, focusing on taking down drug trafficking networks, and far more surveillance, to name a few. 

The quotes are interesting, but I’m not sure they’re all that informative, unless the goal is to show that there isn’t one answer to reducing violent crime. Still, if the Times’ goal is to dig into why homicides fell so dramatically across the country last year, it doesn’t make much sense to focus on a city where violent crime has been trending down for more than a decade. 

My choice would have been Birmingham, Alabama. Homicides dropped 43% between 2024 and 2025, and without any major changes to its police department or the state’s gun laws. In 2024, Mayor Randall Woodfin largely pinned the blame for record-high levels of violence on Alabama’s permitless and open carry laws, but if that was the case then we’d expect similar levels of violence last year instead of seeing murders plummet in the city. 

Woodfin and others have credited a new law banning the possession of “switches” that illegally convert semi-automatic firearms into fully-automatic machine pistols, that didn’t take effect until mid-March in 2025. Birmingham police chief Michael Pickett, though, said homicides had dropped by 50% for most of the year, including before the ban was signed into law by Gov. Kay Ivey. The number of homicides actually ticked up towards the end of 2025, months after the ban had taken effect. 

Pickett credits something else for the decline in homicides:

Pickett, who was 40 and the youngest person to lead the police department in the city’s history when he was initially appointed interim chief in October 2024, said his implementation of the Special Enforcement Team has played a major role in decreasing crime.

“They’re going after people who are known shooters, going after the areas where we know there is potential violent activity and engaging those individuals before they can act,” he said.

“The strategy is pursuing those once we know they’ve committed some type violent act whether it was a homicide, a discharging into an occupied dwelling or vehicle, and getting that person in custody.”

“When we had our homicides throughout the year,” the chief said, “we wanted to as quickly as possible identify those responsible and get that person in custody.”

Doing so, he said, prevents retaliation and prevents them being able to reoffend.

Going after the small number of violent offenders makes much more sense than Woodfin’s preferred strategy of criminalizing carrying a firearm without a license, and it seems to have paid off. 

So, will the New York Times report on Birmingham’s experience, or will it continue to focus on cities where crime has been dropping for several years now? And will its reporting even bother to acknowledge that the plummeting homicide rate stands in direct contrast to the predictions of the gun control lobby, who’ve maintained that the demise of “may issue” permitting regimes and the rise of permitless carry states was bound to lead to more murders? I’m not holding my breath, but if the Times defies my expectations I’ll be more than happy to talk about that development. 

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

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