Higher employment = lower crime.
Another Great accomplishment by President Trump.
MAGA
2
Winning...not that he’s going to get any credit for it.
2
'There is still no consensus on why murder rose nationally in 2015 and 2016,' though Eric Holder might could provide some insight. 'Similarly, a projected drop in murder in 2018 would not have an obvious cause' but let's ask Jeff Sessions to see what he thinks...
Certainly conventional “dangerous neighborhoods” don’t really exist anymore in NYC...And the subway is safe if unglamorous
I appreciate the combo of rejecting what facts we have, plus going off about the invented “fact,” that more guns equals less crime, animating the discussion.
Fact is, the article’s right: murder rate’s been dropping for a couple decades. We have some guesses, but we don’t really know why.
I mean, rational people would want some org like the CDC to study this and maybe find out, but nah, Congress banned that namby-pamby librul knowledge thing. As the chair of the Texas School Board said before voting to yank mentions of pink triangles out of history books, “we’re not gonna be dictated to by experts any more.”
Pity, really. I’d kind of like to know why the typical major mass shooter in this country is male, white, possessed of some sort of wackadoodle right-wing political belief or a general nihilism, and uses an assault rifle or a fancy semi-auto pistol with a high-capacity mag. Wouldn’t mind knowing why we’re stupid enough to let such obvious loons—you can generally see them coming for years—suddenly buy a buncha fancy bang-bang and ammo, too.
@Robert
Do yourself and the rest of us a favor and go to
drgo.us and type "cdc" in the search box. It should bring up at least six articles documenting why the CDC was defunded for their agenda-driven pseudo-research.
Then search for "kleck" as in Gary Kleck, who found three years of unpublished data in CDC archives verifying his estimates in 1994 that there are hundreds of thousands, even perhaps some millions of times annually that law-abiding gun owners and carriers successfully defended themselves, most often without firing a shot.
3
Murder rate, mass shooting rate, terrorism rate, undocumented immigration rate, atmospheric co2 rate...whatever...
I know it’s not the FBI’s business but the ONLY thing that truly terrifies me, for myself personally, my family and my friends is dementia. First it takes what people generally refer to as “their life”, then you and your family’s financial resources and then it kills you.
1
It's probably due to "mellowing" of citizens via the increase in legal marijuana nation-wide. Just a guess.
1
Yay - so our murder rates places us smack dab in the middle of other third-world nations that have easy access to AK-47's and dysfunctional justice systems.
Maybe - just maybe - we should be aiming a bit higher.
3
The reason the murder rate is down is because they are failing to count murders by the police.
Why are murders are down? Could it be because emergency medicine is getting better? Or shooters are missing their target? What is the rate of shootings year over year?
1
The Times should check, but it may be the case that some US cities are now approaching, or even surpassing, Canadian levels of urban safety. That's unprecedented.
1
What it does not explain is non-fatal shootings while yes homicides could be dropping at the same time in many jurisdictions non-fatal shootings are increasing and in many cities specific pockets have homicide rates that exceed the national average. Police often under-report non-fatal shootings if the victim does not identify an assailant which many victims will do even when they know how shot them. When departments under report non-fatal shootings trauma centers actually get the bodies so there is a wide variation between what trauma centers report and what the police report.
2
But mass murder by automatic weapon, in addition to all gun deaths, have skyrocketed. So, are we really that much safer? Statistically probably yes, but emotionally and intuitively, no. The country does not seem safer to me, and I’ve been alive since 1960, a New Yorker since 1978.
1
@Pietro Allar
"Mass murder by automatic weapon?" Really??
In France, yes. And in most of the rest of the world, but not here. There have been no "mass murders by automatic weapon" here. I recommend studying firearm vocabulary a bit more.
"All gun deaths, have skyrocketed?" Nope. The numbers and rates have been dropping with but minor variation since the more recent peaks of 1991 and 1993. See http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm for starters.
6
@Pietro Allar
"Mass murder by automatic weapon?" Really??
In France, yes. And in most of the rest of the world, but not here. There have been no "mass murders by automatic weapon" here. I recommend studying firearm vocabulary a bit more.
4
@Pietro Allar please go to the Center for Disease Control web page.... https://www.cdc.gov/ in that page you will find that 65% of all gun deaths are suicides...... if you want to reduce gun deaths then get off the media band wagon and ask you elected officials to refund the mental health dollars........this also would address your mass murder point as all of these people are mentally Ill
5
Murder rate drops
Suicide rate spikes
I guess thats a good trade OFF?
2
@Jack
That is probably a good trade off. People not wanting to die aren't dying.
3
Match this with the unprecedented suicide rate and you have the equivalent exchange number in bodies.
1
@Hopeful closing mental health hospitals, cutting funding for mental health and eliminating places people can go who need help...... contact your elected official and tell them you want them to refund this money....
1
@Hopeful
At least the people committing suicide made that choice.
Maybe BLM petering out has allowed police forces to get back to proactive policing.
The big driver in Chicago was a cold and damp start to summer.
3
Thanks. I hadn’t known that those poor police were being kept from proactively shooting unarmed black men in the back or proactively putting down kids with toy guns or proactively blowing away the guy who lived next door or proactively shooting an empty-handed black vet at a mall shooting (again in the back) who was running from a shooter.
1
Wonderful. But not too great for the Families of those killed in Mass shootings. You know, when the perpetrator is almost always a raging white Male, intent on going out with a deadly bang. Let’s have more research and statistics on THOSE Murders, and what steps can be taken to lessen the numbers slaughtered. I’ve got some great suggestions, but the moderators are apparently afraid of the NRA zealots
Otherwise, I completely agree with with some comments. Actual Deaths are down because of impressive improvements in Trama Care, due to Training and experience. And yes, some of the most likely people to have been Murdered have instead died from a Drug Overdose. Maybe this is just a blip and will start increasing in a year or two. We shall see.
2
@Phyliss Dalmatian when you stop funding the mental health dollars this is what happens..... if you really want to stop these shooting then contact you elected official and tell them to refund the mental health dollars...... just my opinion - mass shootings went up when they took prayer out of the public schools.......no mass shootings in the 50's or 60's and in the 70's and 80's mass shooting were shootings of people the shooter knew..... unlike the last 30 years were it was mostly strangers
1
@jls
Charles Whitman. There were 5 other mass shootings in the ’60s.
It really helps when the mentally ill can't get firearms, as well. Treatment takes time, after all.
The article fails to address what effect medical advances has had on these statistics. Many cities have trauma centers staffed with present or past military doctors who have treated serious combat wounds.
What I would like to see is what the rates of aggravated assaults and attempted murders have been. I am willing to bet that many of these crimes categorized as aggravated assaults or attempted murder would have been counted as a murder statistic had they happened 28 to 30 years ago.
6
Seems like this article could have said more about why this might be happening, even if there is a lot of uncertainty about the cause. Improved trauma care seems like a good guess, though in more rural areas delays in getting medical care might offset any gains. An aging population might be another good guess. Some other guesses: Smart phones and surveillance cameras provide a deterrent. The Internet provides quick access to emergency first-aid. The opioid epidemic has killed off some of the more violent citizens. Gun owners may be taking more precautions with their guns, like storing them in locked cases. Gun control laws, few and imperfect as they may be, along with voluntary bans of some weapons by major retailers, may be helping. More stringent sentencing may be keeping violent offenders incarcerated. This is good news, whatever the reasons.
1
@Dan Frazier or the current President is not calling the police names and telling the people who cause most of the crime that someone else is to blame for the way they live... ---- if you want to reduce the murder rate tell you elected officials to refund the mental health dollars....
There are so many meaningless statistics thrown around in the gun debate. Many associate increased gun ownership with increased gun crime. But during the years referenced here, when murder rates dropped, gun ownership rates increased. I expect the NRA to soon tell us that owning more guns will reduce gun crime.
Those who are familiar with the statistics know that only a tiny fraction of guns are used in crimes so that any correlation between gun ownership and crime is largely coincidental. But don't let the facts get in your way.
7
@michjas
Dear michjas,
I agree. I can't remember who said this but it applies here.
"They are using statistics like a drunkard uses a lamppost, for support, not for enlightenment."
2
So this is good news...
However, in looking at the FBI crime report for 2017, the lowest homicide rate, 3.1 per 100,000, is in cities of 10-25k people. Rural homicide rate is 3.5 per 100,000.
Those "low" homicide rates place us in between 106 and 118th place for lowest rates out of 230 countries. Countries in this range include: Samoa, India, Liberia, Thailand, Latvia, Mozambique, Chile.
Countries with lower rates than 3.1 include: Rwanda, Egypt, Iran, Sri Lanka, Syria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Tajikistan, Kosovo, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia.
So lets keep working on this and not start patting ourselves on our backs.
4
@SXM most of the countries you listed have a total population of less then 15 million people each except Egypt 90 million..... USA has 330 million..... so please don't compare tiny countries to us...... if you really want to reduce gun deaths then tell you elected official to refund the mental health dollars as 60% of all gun death are suicides......then tell them to take on the gang murders....
1
Those are rates per population and contemplate the size of the country.
Gun ownership is rising and murder rate is dropping. Fewer unarmed victims are discouraging to the bad guys.
6
@john holcomb Maybe Congress should get rid of those laws banning research on gun violence so we can figure out what the cause is?
3
Please provide us with such laws that are in the way. Thanks@David Goldberg
What about Chicago??? It’s a disaster
2
@Mike DeMaio. That's where the community organizer in chief is going to have his library. Funny even he doesn't want to live there. Seriously it's almost all gang warfare.
Having worked in a trauma center during my training, the lessons learned during the Vietnam war which have been further refined and spread to multiple new trauma centers has had an impact. The only reliable statistic would be how many were shot or stabbed not the total of non survivors.
3
Nice to have some good news in advance.
Now, why?
I agree with several hypotheses having some contribution:
1. Upward changes in ages;
2. New, effective trauma medical interventions;
3. New policing and community programs.
It is still worth noting, too, that
1. Gun ownership has grown, especially among women and minority women, in particular;
2. More areas allow concealed carry, and the number of permitted carriers is way up, AND the Wild West shootouts have not happened;
3. Where carry regulations have relaxed in metro high-crime areas, the most vulnerable are more likely to protect themselves, AND shootouts involving law-abiding carriers have not happened;
4. No anti-gun or gun control legislation can be shown to have any downward effect on violent crime.
Note that many research articles on topics such as this are on
crimeresearch.org
drgo.us (Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership)
I recommend anyone interested in these types of topics spend considerable time on the hundreds of articles and research available on these sites.
4
@T Campbell
Increasing population, different way in counting murders in the late 90's, more aged citizens vs younger ones. There are many explanations to this that are not examined. Suicides for one. Then what part are due to guns. Accidental death caused by guns and other factors? To say this is due to gun control, and you didn't, isn't a trustful examination of murder, accidental death, suicide or other ways of dying from doctors, negligence or other factors that apparently still on the rise. Thanks for your insightful post.
3
@FreelandDave
Suicides? I'm having trouble linking them to murders and murder rates? Fifty % in this country are by guns. In Japan, with a much higher rate, almost none.
Accidental deaths from gunshots are vanishingly small and are not normally counted among murders. Accidental shooting deaths have dropped significantly over the decades.
I guess I'm wondering where you want to go with this, and I appreciate your compliment.
The most basic prediction that should be made about the increases in gun ownership and carrying is that we should be experiencing universal mayhem by now. That is not at all the case, and in fact violent crime rates are way down compared to the early 1990s, as shown correctly in the article. Also, see http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
Murders are heavily concentrated in a few counties and within those counties in this country. See
https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/number-murders-county-54-us-counties-2014-zero-murders-69-1-murder/
Also, almost never are the positive sides of lawful gun ownership emphasized. Gary Kleck estimated in 1994 large numbers of shootings and murders didn't happen because potential victims defended themselves effectively with guns. His conclusions were confirmed by the CDC in findings published earlier this year. All we hear about is downside, not the considerable upside.
5
Echoing a previous commenter: Let's see the stats on ATTEMPTED murders. Response logistics and medical care may have improved, thus lowering successful murder rates.
6
The data ARE available.
Increase in concealed carry laws appears to have made a big difference in the last thirty years. The good guys have guns and the bad guys, who always had them, know they might pick on the wrong person to molest or rob.
5
@DRG Most (non-suicide) shootings are bad guy on bad guy.
The statement below is a great example of simple REGRESSION TO THE MEAN and says nothing about big cities per se. The same statement would hold if "big city" were replaced with "small city", "western city", "eastern city", "suburbs",... or any subset of the the overall data. Logically speaking, it can't be any other way.
"Estimating national trends from a sample of cities can be tricky because big cities tend to overstate national trends. If murder is up substantially in big cities, you can typically expect that the national murder rate is also up, but a little less so."
1
How about the historically low employment rate as the cause of the drop? Honestly, there is not a single problem in America that is not made better by more jobs. Selfishness and greedy behavior (Capitalism) is more effective than good intentions.
8
@Scott L
But, but, but you sound like you support Trump.
So do I and exactly for the reasons you stated.
1
MAGA.
We get the Wall built and America will be half way back to Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver.
3
Tell that to the family of a murder victim. It does not matter to those who have lost their family members or friends to senseless gun murders.
Mass shootings and shooting in malls are not down. We still have to deal with how guns are distributed in this country.
4
@Deb K There has been a huge increase in gun sales in the past few years. Maybe that's one reason why the murder rate's down. If it had gone up you would have blamed the increase in gun sales, so why wouldn't you credit them when the correlation goes the other way. Here's a better question. Why are we creating loners who go out & murder for seemingly no reason. The latest mass shootings all share one thing. They weren't done for a political or religious cause they just wanted to kill.
4
@Deb K
I agree. We need to put more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens who know when and how to use them and stop criminal murderers from preying on the innocent.
2
Gun sales are up, but the fraction of Americans who own guns has been about the same in recent decades. About 43% of people own guns, but only about 20% of urban dwellers do. Yet most of the drop in gun crime has been on cities. https://www.statista.com/statistics/249740/percentage-of-households-in-the-united-states-owning-a-firearm/#0
I live in a city in CA which has an extremely high crime rate - mostly property theft, robbery, car theft, laptop snatches, etc. Way above average for the state.
And yet, the murder rate is less than 1 per 100,000 residents - there can be many years in a row with no murders at all. There are cultural factors I guess that make people less murderous. Why would that be? What might those be?
4
It looks like those Obama and Clinton gun initiatives are starting to kick in.
1
@Mike Good one.
Deaths are down because ER trauma medicine has greatly improved. It lessens the odds of dying, whereas just a decade ago those with bullet holes would not have survived.
8
@Tim
This report doesn't indicate how many people are shot by guns. How many people are seriously injured or maimed by gun shot wounds ? Parkland high school students are still being treated due to gun shot wounds.
If someone has a disability due to a gunshot wound, is that statistic not important? Is there even a statistical report of the years of medical treatment required as a result of a gun shot wound?
3
The mass shooting at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas (60 dead) is not included in the Vegas count. Why not? Are other mass shooting victims included in the nationwide statistics?
9
@mindy Deaths in the US due to "mass shootings" are insignificant compared with total numbers of homicides each year. Tens as compared with thousands.
3
Because that was 2017.......@mindy
2
People are dying of overdoses instead of bullets. I am surprised we don't count those overdose deaths in the murder rate.
5
The Opioid overdose issue is way overblown, in my opinion. They now combine Opioid Pain Killers, with heroin/fentanyl incident statistics. There is a major difference between getting pain killers from a pharmacy, and buying a bindle of something, that might be some wheel bearing grease (black tar), some flour or Bisquick (China White), or something completely different, mixed with Fentanyl. 72,000 last year, from mainly Fentanyl, but tobacco related deaths were 480,000. 5 times as many, yet nothing is done about it.
2
@BorisRoberts It's all about optics and politics. If a topic/subject doesn't fit nicely into some groups agenda, then it isn't deemed important enough to garner an additional look. These things change like the shifting wind, and the wind is blowing out at this time rather than in where it is felt the most.
@Ben I'd venture to say that this is related more to the Darwin effect than murder rate.
So what?
Of the 37,000 Americans who die from gunshot every year about 2/3rds are suicides. And 80% are white men who tend to use handguns and to be veterans and to suffer from mental illness.
Mass and stranger shootings tend to be rare. Most homicides involve family and friends and neighbors of the same socioeconomic educational color aka race and ethnic sectarian class caste. About 95% of homicides involve people of the same color aka race. The rest are roughly equally distributed by color aka race.
Homicides have been dropping in America for the last 25 years. Homicides in Chicago are the lowest in nearly 60 years. While Chicago still has more homicides than NYC and LA combined on a per capita homicide basis New Orleans, St. Louis, Detroit and Baltimore are far more deadly.
About 35,000 Americans die in automobile accidents and 66,000 Americans die of drug overdose. Suicide takes 24,000 American lives. While homicides take 13,000 lives.
If we cared about American lives we would focus on drug overdose, suicide and mental illness. The white American majority is aging and shrinking with a below replacement level birthrate. And the white American majority life expectancy is decreasing due to alcoholism, drug addiction, depression and suicide.
MAGA?
10
Of course anytime the murder trend goes downwards it is good, but this short term move is really statistically insignificant. If we only severely limited most handguns and all semi-automatic weapons while greatly increasing licensing requirements for rifles and shotguns, we could probably cut the remaining murder rate between fifty and seventy five percent, saving thousands of lives a year along with billions of dollars. Now that would be something to truly celebrate.
1
Don’t we have boom in Millennials and Gen Z? That seems to defeat demographics. It is probably that the major drug dealers have solidified their markets and do not need to go to gun battles to settle business disputes. We still see individual disputes that turn to gunfire, but not all out wars we saw in 80’s and 90’s, the period that set the benchmark. A high incarceration rate has to have some impact. I expect the analysis says no because the analysts cannot find direct correlations in the 95% 3 sigma range. It still remains we have a lot of bad guys in jail that would be likely committing more crimes if on the street, many of those crimes that would escalate to murder.
8
I wonder if reporting only on the murders in big cities skews our impressions of where murders happen. Cities are continuing to get safer. Rural communities are suffering. Critics of common sense gun policy often talk about Chicago and Detroit, which have about 11 murders per 100,000 residents. That's high, but nothing like rural America, especially in the South.
Consider Coahoma County in Mississippi, of which Clarksdale is the most populous community (16,000 people). It has a murder rate of 37 per 100,000 residents. Look at the other high murder counties:
https://www.policeone.com/ambush/articles/370416006-10-U-S-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate/
17
@Cousy Depends on one's perception of the term 'rural'. All but one of the 10 areas mentioned in the article are within a very short drive of the "big city" geographically speaking. Murder rates have everything to do with employment and culture. Statistics are used as a means to support or disprove a point of view.
1
Proof that Trump has scared away all those homicidal immigrants!
8
@Alex I'm sure he believes that.
1
Unfortunately, murders are not down in Baltimore where I live. It's so sad because Baltimore is really a great city, but lacks appropriate leadership.
8
@Diane
Well, they do appear to be down somewhat compared to last year. e.g.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/09/25/baltimore-homicide-murder-rate-fbi-statistics-death-crime-killings/1426739002/
But last year was a very high level, and the murder rate in Baltimore still remains extremely high.
The question is whether this year compared to last is part of a trend, or just small random statistical variation.
(I also mainly live in Baltimore.)
1
The simple answer is usually correct. Obama, Black Lives Matter=increasing murder rate. Trump, American carnage, = decreasing murder rate. Thank you for your leadership, Mr. President.
8
@SHerman. Well, I agree that yours is a "simple" answer. Oh, by the way, hate crimes have greatly increased under Trump.
13
@SHerman
"Simple" as in lacking in worldly wisdom or informed judgment?
1
We need to see a graph or murder + attempted murder statistics.
It could very well be that people are just as likely now as in the 1980s to try to kill each other, but advanced trauma care is keeping more of them alive - thus simply moving them from the murder to the attempted murder crime category.
35
History has shown us that the top three reasons murder rates go up or down are:
1-Demographics.
2-Demographics.
3-Domographics.
This is much like location in RE. The massive baby boom population coming of age in the 1970s thru early 1990s sent the number thru the roof. The baby bust after 1990s sent it plummeting downward.
Of course, the demagogue pols. on both sides will use it to their advantage. Mayor Rudy G, used it to turn the NYPD into a mini gestapo force despite the fact the murder rate was dropping in almost all cities, many of whom did not do this.
The liberals will take credit saying given murders parole after 7 yrs, like in the Lindsey era is/was the way to go.
One of the reasons for the massive drop in NYC in recent yrs. is the massive influx of young people from western countries who do not suffer from our cultural abuse gun sickness.
5
@Paul
Given that some of the highest gun ownership states also have some of the lowest gun murder rates, NYC could use an influx of people from Idaho, Wyoming, and the Dakotas.
15
@Paul
What massive influx from Western countries? Most immigration is from Latin American countries that have much higher murder rates than the United States.
7
@Paul Massive influx of immigrants! They are here to work and make money.
This is good news.
One factor in the generally declining rate: age. We're getting older as a nation, and older folks commit less violent crime. And the number of young people is declining. According to Nathan Grawe's research, there is going to be a radical shift in the number of 18 year old's by 2030. There will be fewer of them and they will live disproportionately in the South. A higher proportion of them will be Asian and Latino than now.
So to the extent that age is a factor, we can expect the murder rate to continue to decline, more so in the Northeast and upper midwest, where the population is aging most quickly.
16
@Cousy-Yes...age is one of the biggest factors re the ups and downs of murder rates. The biggest example of it was the coming of age and then the aging of the baby boomer generation.
3
One of the main causes of the declining murder rate over the last 50+ years has been improvements in medical and trauma care. Even in this century, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been responsible for significant advancements in trauma care that have saved the lives of thousands of gunshot victims who would have died in the 1990s. I don't know how you would statistically adjust for that, though, but it is arguably analogous to not adjusting for inflation when you compare the price of a gallon of gas in 1980 versus what it costs today.
24
@Tastes Better than the Truth- good point but demographics still rule. I am sure your point makes up for it a bit but it would only make a great difference over a long period...ie say from the Civil War to the present or even WW2 to the present.
2
@Tastes Better than the Truth This is a significant factor. Chicago experienced a serious spike in the murder rate circa 2003 with no material change in demographics, et al. Interestingly, the gunshot rate had not changed much.
The causal reason was a Univ of Chicago Trauma Center was closed. Gunshot victims thus had to be transported to a different Trauma Center. Turns out the additional 10-15 minutes of transport time resulted in victims bleeding out en route and thus becoming a murder victim.
Reopening the original Trauma Center resulted in murder rates dropping dramatically.
Freakonomics has a chapter on this.
3
@Eric Bruce-believe me Eric if it was that simple, the. mayor would have opened 10 trauma centers to get the good pub.
Sometimes demos are obvious like youth bulges in the pop, or in the case of Chicago, not as much gentrification or type of gentrification like in NY but in the end demographics rule when it comes to spikes or dips in the murder rate...
2