When President Donald Trump recently labeled Chicago “the most dangerous city in the world,” complete with promises of deploying the National Guard, it felt less like the voice of a president and more like a storyline for cable news ratings. But behind the overheated headlines lies a more nuanced narrative, one where Chicago’s ravaged South and West sides stubbornly wrestle with gun violence, even as the broader city experiences one of its sharpest crime declines in years.

Trump’s theatrics (calling the city a “murder capital” and threatening military intervention) paint Chicago as a spectacle of chaos. Yet the data tells a different story. In 2024, Chicago’s homicide rate of 17.5 per 100,000 lagged far behind several Republican-led cities, including Jackson, Memphis, St. Louis and Birmin

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