Responding the New York Times: Trump’s Crackdown Will Make Crime Worse

The New York Instances has a brand new piece by a gun management advocate who claims that rising regulation enforcement in D.C. might be both “useless” or counterproductive. At the least gun management advocates are constant, they don’t need regulation enforcement to guard individuals on the similar time they don’t need individuals to guard themselves, although we didn’t make that time within the piece. Here’s a letter to the New York Instances that we submitted, although (large shock) it wasn’t accepted.

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To assert that President Trump’s insurance policies gas crime and “needlessly” rising regulation enforcement ignores the information in Washington, D.C. (“Trump’s Crackdown will Make Crime Worse,” Aug. 22, 2025).

In December 2024, DC had 1,340 patrol officers and about 3,400 of any kind of officer, and solely a 3rd on responsibility without delay, that left roughly 450 patrol officers defending a metropolis of 720,000. Trump modified the equation by sending in additional than 500 federal officers and about 800 Nationwide Guard troops—doubling the town’s seen regulation enforcement.

The outcomes communicate for themselves. Final yr, D.C. led the nation’s large cities in murders—28% increased than Indianapolis and 179% above the common. But for 12 straight days by Sunday, not a single murder occurred. The percentages of that occuring by likelihood are extraordinarily small—simply 1 in 272 in comparison with this yr’s price, and 1 in 478 towards final yr’s.

As well as, nearly all these lived saved are blacks. A Nationwide Institute for Prison Justice Reform evaluation of D.C. homicides between 2019 and 2021 discovered that 96% of victims had been black.