High Gun Homicide Rates: What Are We Missing?
For a number of years, we’ve been told that guns had replaced gangs. With a gun, a young man didn’t need buddies to protect him. But according to new studies, that’s not actually true. Contrary to the broad term “gun violence,” much of our country’s firearm crime is highly concentrated among street groups or what we called “gangs” in the past. These groups often occupy specific urban areas—like the east side of Indianapolis, among others here.
Says the study by the Council on Criminal Justice, “Research shows that gun violence is remarkably clustered among a small number of high-risk people and places.”
Although juvenile gun violence may be generated by group-related clashes, most of the rest of the violence here—and in other states—is perpetrated by men under the age of 35 who act under their own volition, without group-related direction. Statistics say Indiana has the 13th highest gun homicide rate in the country as of 2023, and the 4th highest gun suicide rate among Black people in the country. Also in 2023, firearms were the leading cause of death among young people in Indiana between the ages of one through 17.
As of August 2025, there were 1,258 gun deaths in Indiana—and that’s an improvement from last year. But consider Illinois, with Chicago’s constant gun violence issues, Illinois has 13.5 deaths per thousand. Then there’s Ohio, with numerous large cities and urban neighborhoods, it has 15 gun deaths per thousand so far. How is it that Indiana beats them both, with a rate per thousand in Indiana at 18.3 gun deaths per thousand? What are we missing?
First of all, we have to realize that gun homicide is not occurring everywhere equally. It is happening repeatedly in many of the same vulnerable neighborhoods and social circles, often driven by juvenile groups as well as angry young adults. And we know where most of them live.
They live in areas of widespread poverty, with few opportunities, and they live with past trauma that drives crime and gang activity. Do you want to get people off the street and reduce crime and gun violence? Get jobs for people who have formerly been incarcerated. Studies show that “for those who find a good job soon after release from incarceration, recidivism (and crime) can be reduced by 90%.”
When you cannot get employment or keep employment due to lack of transportation, this population often has nowhere to go except back to criminal activity. People have to eat. And until we utilize a method of lifting people out of lack through job connection and a ride when needed, we will continue to count deaths, and be shocked by the overwhelming use of firearms in the hands of frustrated and downtrodden people.
That’s what we’re missing,
Nancy
