Massive crime spike stems from social unrest, COVID lockdowns destabilizing communities: expert

coronavirus pandemic is in large part to blame for the national surge in violent crime — not guns, an expert told Fox News Digital."We have crime because we have people," said Amy Swearer, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "Crime is a very complex subject."From the early 1990s through 2019, there was a national decline in violent crime, but the pendulum swung back in 2020, she said.RELATED: Stats show crime is spiking in Los Angeles"We’ve seen across the nation unprecedented spikes in homicide rates and other types of violent crime," she said.Within two weeks two women were killed in unprovoked attacks by homeless men in Los Angeles.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva joined FOX 11 News to talk about the lengthy criminal past of one of the suspects as well as the spike in crime within the county.The homicide rate shot up by 30% in 2020 compared to 2019 — the sharpest one-year increase in the nation’s history — and the upward trend has continued into 2021, according to FBI and other data.

About 4,000 more Americans were murdered in 2020 compared to the prior year, Swearer said.Widespread rioting and social unrest over racial injustice in addition to COVID-19 shutdowns destabilized communities, she said.RELATED: Most homicide victims in many US cities are Black, key data showsGang violence intervention programs, schools and other vital community services were shuttered, Swearer noted.Although shootings are up in many big cities, Swearer said eliminating guns isn’t a realistic goal when there are 400 million privately owned firearms in the U.S.

This figure doesn’t include police or military weapons."The cat is already out of the bag," she added. "There are more privately owned guns than people in.