Shootings rise with the heat, and cities can see those weekends coming

What happened

A new analysis shared exclusively with The Trace tries to measure how many shootings are linked to rising heat. According to The Trace, Climate Central, a nonprofit focused on climate change research and communication, estimates that approximately 2,000 shootings between 2021 and 2025 in the 100 U.S. cities with the most gun violence are attributable to high temperatures made more likely by climate change.

The Trace opened its story in Philadelphia, which it reported is on track this year for its lowest number of homicides since 1963. Over the Fourth of July weekend, a heat dome from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico left 165 million people facing major or extreme heat, and Philadelphia topped 100 degrees for three consecutive days, the outlet reported. Between July 2 and July 4, according to The Trace, the Gun Violence Archive recorded nine shootings in the city, with three people killed and nine wounded. Climate Central found that the weekend’s heat was at least twice as likely because of climate change, The Trace reported.

The Trace wrote that existing research already shows that “when temperatures rise, gun violence increases.” What was previously unknown, the outlet said, was how much of that link comes from climate change. The 2,000 figure is an estimate from one analysis. We could not load the full article, so this summary draws only on its opening sections. Read The Trace’s piece for the methods and for the people it interviewed.

Our reflection

Three people did not come home from a holiday weekend in Philadelphia, and nine more were wounded. Each of them has a family that will hear July fireworks differently from now on, and a chart can’t hold that.

Be careful with what heat explains. A hundred degrees does not load a gun. Jesus said anger is already murder in the heart (Matthew 5:21 to 22), and that what defiles a person comes from inside (Mark 7:21). Heat does not put the rage there. It finds what was already there and shortens the fuse. I know that from my own kitchen, when I am worn out and short with the people I love, and from words I have said in a hot car that I could not take back. A corner in Philadelphia works no differently. On the worst nights, the difference is often whether a gun was within reach and whether anyone was there to talk a young man down.

Scripture has a scene for this. Jonah sits outside Nineveh with the sun beating on his head, and he gets so angry he says he would rather die (Jonah 4:8 to 9). God does not lecture him about the weather. He asks Jonah to care about a city full of people who do not know their right hand from their left. The heat showed what was in Jonah’s heart, and God answered with pity for a whole city.

Jesus went further. John tells us he sat down tired at a well around noon, the hottest hour, and asked a woman everyone else avoided for a drink of water (John 4:6 to 7). He did not wait for evening. He went out in the worst of the heat to the person nobody was planning for, and he stayed until her life had changed.

A heat wave is a schedule

The useful part of this reporting is that the danger is predictable. A city can read a ten-day forecast. So it can see its worst weekends coming and staff for them: rec centers open late, outreach workers on extra shifts, summer jobs that start before July, mentors who are already known on the block before the first 95-degree night. When a summer program runs out of money in June, that is a choice, and every city knows July is coming.

Philadelphia’s falling homicide count shows a city’s numbers can move. The part of The Trace’s story we could read does not say what drove the decline, and we will not guess. What we know from our own JCVI work in Miami, Chicago and Houston is simpler. You reach a young person at first contact, before a record exists, and you stay. Summer is when staying is hardest, and when it counts.

The next heat wave is already on a calendar somewhere. This week, ask your city what its plan is for those weekends, and stand behind the people who will be outside when the temperature climbs.

For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat.

Isaiah 25:4

Source: The Trace, “Higher Temperatures Fuel Gun Violence. Now We Know How Much Is From Climate Change.”