A Growing Divide in Urban Gun Violence

Last year saw a series of brutal mass shootings in affluent white suburbs like Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown, Connecticut. The same year marked a growing divide in violence in urban centers that continue to suffer the majority of fatal gun violence. At the same time that homicides soared in Chicago and Detroit in 2012, they reached decades-long or near-record lows in New York and Washington, D.C.

The 62 center cities of America's 50 largest metro areas account for 15 percent of the population but 39 percent of gun-related murders, 11 percent of suicides, and 23 percent of total homicides, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2006-2007. (For comparison's sake, the 50 largest metros account for more than half of the population and about two-thirds of gun murders (67 percent), and roughly four in 10 suicides (41 percent).