ByThe city skyline looms as an ambulance and police cruisers race past on Aug. 5, 2018.— parents, children, siblings, spouses, neighbors and friends — were slain in Chicago. The vast majority were killed with guns. London, a city with more than three times as many people, had 109 homicides last year, and earlier this year, the London mayorThe harms of gun violence on Chicago’s families and neighborhoods persist in part because of the harm shootings impose on the local economy.
Between 1840 and 1910, the city grew from a village of 4,000 people to the nation’s second largest city. But today, trucks and the internet move economic value across the country. Factories have closed, farms are largely mechanized, and most jobs are in the service sector and can increasingly be performed anywhere. People are increasingly voting with their feet to flee the Rust Belt for the South and West. People and businesses are less tied to any one place than ever before.
Another way gun violence hurts the local economy is by driving away customers. Our University of Chicago colleague Steve Levitt and University of California at San Diego economist Julie Cullen