US cities had highest homicide rates during pandemic: study

NEW YORK - The year 2021 was the deadliest in US history, thanks mainly to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the homicide rate has also soared in several cities since 2020, US television network NewsNation has reported.

The most recent available data from the government shows a 35 percent jump in gun homicides from 2019 to 2020, when 19,384 people were killed, NewsNation reported Saturday, citing a new study.

The study calculated homicide rate increases over the course of the pandemic and found that New Orleans had the highest, followed by Cincinnati, Atlanta, Baltimore, Memphis, Milwaukee, Louisville, Norfolk, Detroit and Dallas.

The 10 lowest were San Francisco, Chandler, Riverside, Austin, Charlotte, Sacramento, Garland, Omaha, Boston, Madison and Lincoln.

In times of financial stress or anxiety, gun sales tend to strengthen, as does violence and racial hostility; with the pandemic, a new stressor may have affected the high homicide numbers, Shaundra Kellan Lewis, a law professor at Texas Southern University, told NewsNation.