Hochul’s Buffalo Trending the Wrong Way on Shootings

Homicides are down by more than 20 percent in Buffalo, New York this year, and while that is great news, no credit should be given to the state’s restrictive gun laws. 

Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan and Police Commissioner Erika Shields held a press conference on Tuesday touting an 8 percent decline in violent crime in the city, including a 23 percent decline in gun-involved homicides. Shields and the mayor credit the Buffalo PD’s efforts in targeting illegally-possessed firearms for the drop, pointing to the 282 gun arrests so far this year.

“Almost every gun used in a shooting is an illegal gun,” Ryan said. “The question comes to, where do these guns come from?”

He said the weapons come from a few sources.

“They come from southern states that have very lax laws, the Iron Pipeline,” Ryan said, adding that many of the weapons are also stolen from people’s homes.

The number one source state for firearms traced in New York is… New York. The ATF reports that in 2024, 1,734 firearms were traced back to a New York sale. Georgia was the second most common state for a firearms trace with 990 firearms, but it’s incredibly deceptive of the mayor to blame southern states for “illegal guns” when New York is by far the biggest source for firearms traced in the state. 

It’s also disingenuous for the mayor to argue that gun-involved homicides are down because of fewer “illegal” guns on the street when non-fatal shootings are actually higher than they were this time last year. Buffalo police have investigated 71 reported shooting incidents in 2026, which is about 10 percent more than at this point in 2025. 

There are plenty of cities with less restrictive gun laws that have seen bigger reductions in shootings this year. The Crime Index data shows a 5.6 percent increase in aggravated assaults in Buffalo compared to 2025, along with a 56.3 percent decline in homicides. Those figures cover January to June 1 and include crimes in which firearms weren’t used as well, but they’re still a useful proxy for gun-involved crimes. 

Miami, Florida has seen a 50 percent decline in murder during the same time period, along with an 8 percent drop in aggravated assaults. Murders are down 43 percent in Tucson, Arizona, along with a 2.3 percent decline in aggravated assaults. And in Memphis, homicides are down 41.3 percent with a 28 percent drop in aggravated assaults. 

New York politicians love to blame southern states for their crime almost as much as they enjoy blaming lawful gun owners for the actions of criminals. The fact of the matter is that the Empire State has plenty of homegrown criminals who are illegally accessing guns that were once lawfully purchased in New York, and despite the state’s draconian laws that have put guys like Dexter Taylor in prison for ten years simply for making his own unregistered firearms, some lawbreakers continue to get a pass from soft-on-crime judges like the one who recently sentenced an 18-year-old to just six months in jail and five years probation for bringing a handgun to his high school.

I’m glad that murders have dropped so dramatically in Buffalo this year, and I hope that by the time we say goodbye to 2026 the same can be said about non-fatal shootings too. I will not, however, give any credit to the state’s draconian gun laws when there are plenty of cities in states that don’t criminalize basic aspects of our right to keep and bear arms that are doing even better than Buffalo. 

Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.

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