Murder by Numbers: Today's murder rate is essentially at a low point of the past century.

Listening to the latest media chatter, one could get the impression that murder in the US is historically bad and getting worse. As the Reverend Al Sharpton put it, "The time for their talk is over. Now's the time for action, and real change on gun control."

Actually, now would seem to be a very bad time for such action. The reason is simple: the murder rate is historically low and is already trending downward. In fact, the murder rate in 2011 was the lowest since 1961: 4.7 murders per 100,000 people. In only 5 years since 1910 has it been lower: 1955-59, when it was only slightly lower at 4.5 or 4.6.

Data source: The Federal Bureau of Investigation. For years 1900-1991: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/hmrttab.cfm. For years 1992-2011: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1

Today's murder rate is essentially at a low point of the past century. The murder rate in 2011 was lower than it was in 1911.

And the trend is downward. Whatever we've been doing over the last 20-30 years seems to be working, more or less. The murder rate has been cut by more than half since 1980: from 10.7 to 4.7.

We can only speculate on what might be behind this trend, but I will point out a few interesting facts.

I read this earlier and the old “facts don’t matter” meme comes to mind. All in for the sake of the agenda regardless of facts. Kinda like AGW “facts” which the new sec state will be pushing once confirmed by the senate. And why wouldn’t he be? (Haughtiness aside.) Come on John. New position for you so why the long face?

Helping keep mankind warm for 65 years.

I read an article that was a couple of years old on NPR, of all places, about murders in Chicago. Even within Chicago, all the murders took place in an area that made up 8% of the city.

Looking at the numbers by state, I noticed Arizona & New Mexico have much higher rates than our neighbors just north of us. But here, a huge amount of the crime involves drug smuggling from Mexico. There are small areas where that is a big business. Outside those areas, I’d bet the murder rate is more like Idaho’s...

It’s also interesting to note that this is *not* a list of all homicides, but only of homicide *offenses*, homicide crimes. “Legal” homicides, such as defending against crime, are not listed.

And this matters a lot. For example, when a murderer kills and gets away with it, it is listed as a single homicide crime, but the murderer is free to kill again. But when an *attempted* murderer is instead killed in self defense, not only is his death not part of the statistics, but neither are the homicides of people he would have killed in the future.

That is, the recidivism rate for dead criminals is zero.

As is the cost of trial and incarceration, which for a violent criminal with a 20-year sentence can run to as much as $2 million each. A dead criminal costs the price of the bullets, police and medical examiner time, and a pauper’s pine coffin and burial. A bargain.

Now if we can just do something about institutionalizing the criminally insane.

This is a great article which also refutes the media talking point that the murder rate in the US is high relative to other countries. It also shows a correlation between decreased murder rate and increased gun ownership.

Perhaps facts do not matter, but to some people they do.

Thanks for sharing this article.

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