in 2020, some pointed to higher gun sales, which rose in March, at the beginning of the pandemic. But homicides in 2020 only started to rise in June, not March. In truth, young men, street gangs, and large numbers of handguns have existed in American society for hundreds of years, and over periods where homicides declined, such as in the early 1990s. And there was little evidence to suggest that any of those variables had changed suddenly or dramatically enough in 2015 or 2020 to account for the homicide spikes.
