Mayor declares gun violence a public health crisis in Columbus

The mayor of Columbus, Ohio, announced on Tuesday that he would declare gun violence a public health crisis after the city reported two consecutive years of record-breaking homicide figures.

Mayor Andrew Ginther (D) said at a press conference on Tuesday that Columbus had 204 homicides in 2021, 91 percent of which involved a firearm. Last year’s numbers were up from 180 homicides in 2020. 

“Unfortunately the state and federal levels of governments have not made it easy, or in many cases have made it almost impossible, to take the sort of action that this moment requires,” Ginther said, adding that some laws and legal decisions “have severely limited our ability to move the needle on gun violence.”

“And just as destructive as these laws can be, inaction is equally infuriating,” he added.

“We are less than, as a community, because of gun violence,” Ginther said. “This issue is plaguing our city to a staggering degree.”

In addition to declaring gun violence a public health crisis, the mayor said that the city would form the “Columbus Alliance Against Illegal Guns,” a coalition of residents, community leaders, faith leaders and medical professionals to “demand common sense gun reform.”

The mayor also said he is eager to stop guns from illegally coming into the city, citing data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that said more than 2,700 guns were recovered in Columbus in 2020.

Because of this, he requested that Columbus be permitted to join the Justice Department’s firearms trafficking strike force, which works in cities including New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

The mayor’s push comes as violent crime has been up throughout the pandemic. Cities across the country have seen violence crimes, including homicides, sky rocket in the years since the pandemic took hold. 

While the FBI’s violent crime data is currently only provided through 2020, rates jumped to nearly 400 violent crimes per 100,000 people that year, up from around 380 in 2019. While these rates are high, they still do not compare to the violence seen in the 1980s and ’90s.