“Gun violence” does not make sense as a metric. I am sure that you have seen my posts on “hospital deaths”.
The only metric that makes sense here is overall murder rates and overall violent crime.
If “gun violence” went up, but overall violent crime and murder rates went down, that would be a good thing.
The trouble is that there are no clear statistics of any kind. Starting with killer statistics, so many killers are of “unknown race”. Hospital deaths are limited to in hospital, not dead on scene (I imagine, though I could be wrong), and then victim stats are a mess as well.
Add to it all that there is no standardized format for states to submit data to the FBI for their annual UCR.
That’s why I referred to “violence”, as this is a more subjective, police-level opinion. In some places, this is seen in the local “cop talk”, referencing things like black gang homicides as “UBDs” (”usual black deals”), so based on location, the police know which gangs are likely involved and who to look for.
It gets completely nuts in California, because their state recreation seems to be criminal gangs, ethnic hatred to the point of ethnic cleansing, and other bizarre confusions.