Donald Trump knows that tackling blue-city crime is political gold, despite the setback of today’s ruling on the deployment of troops in Los Angeles earlier this summer. But the President’s own FBI reports that violent crime in rural, small-town red America rivals that of any large US city, as highlighted by a new Axios analysis.

National Guard deployments garner headlines. But in sleepy Greenville, Mississippi, (population: 26,411), residents have lived under a summer-long 9 pm to 6 am curfew. A spate of crime caused the lockdown in a town where the homicide rate is nearly four times the national average. Greenville is no outlier. This reality runs counter to public opinion, according to which 81% believe crime is only a “major problem” in big cities. This is the political calculus behind Trump’s threat to send more troops to blue states. He wants voters to associate Republicans with small-town order and Democrats with big-city crime. Yet the rural South and West are also plagued by murder and mayhem.

In 2025, eight of the 12 states with the highest murder rates were once part of the Confederacy. Historians posit that “racism” and “honour culture” account for this. Others claim limp institutions, schools, employers, and law enforcement are the root cause. But this is a chicken-and-egg argument. Institutions do not stand outside society, and society is deeply influenced by institutions. So, what are the factors that cause crime and violence to spike?

When a 2020 study identified the most dangerous “cities” in America, three of the top four were little more than small towns. Anniston in Alabama, Bessemer in Alabama, and McKeesport in Pennsylvania average 21,000 residents. But they all have a history of a once robust iron and steel industry. Deindustrialisation and job loss caused social dislocation, poverty, and eventually spiralling crime beyond urban America. A 2024 Brookings Report demonstrates that even short-term declines in jobs and schooling caused the jump in crime during and after the pandemic.

When institutions are weak and jobs sparse, crime tends to rise. Western states with high rates of crime and violence, such as New Mexico and Alaska, share with the South poverty and failing institutions. Poverty and jobs are sticky issues with no easy, quick fixes, but government is hardly powerless in restoring public order. In Greenville, the curfew has spawned a 79% fall in violent crime. Murders are down 90%, while aggravated assaults have dropped by 76%. In the nation’s capital, carjackings have fallen by 87%, and all crime has dropped by 15%. However, these emergency measures are not long-term solutions.

Trump knows the politics of crime. Really, deploying the National Guard is a feint to goad Democrats into defending an unpopular status quo. Sending in external troops is not a long-term solution. After all, what is deployed must, eventually, be undeployed. But Democrats have options. A generation ago, they built institutions which helped solve a generation-long crime wave. Among the many provisions of the Democrat’s 1994 “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act” was federal funding of 100,000 police officers. Dispersed throughout the nation and under local control, these officers helped engineer a profound transformation in public safety.

From 1973-91, violent crime, rape, and aggravated assaults spiralled by 83%, 73%, and 118%, respectively. But during the Nineties, American homicide rates fell by 43%. Crimes against property crashed by 34%, and violent crime by a third. In New York City, murders fell by 75% over the course of the decade. Bill Clinton’s surge of police was scarcely the sole cause, but his crime bill nevertheless represented an America in which political leadership identified a problem and offered grown-up remedies. Justice, as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once counselled, only offers “proximate solutions to insoluble problems”.

Trump is right to argue that the federal government has a responsibility for public safety. But this should apply to blue cities and red states alike.

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Jeff Bloodworth is a writer and professor of American political history at Gannon University

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