Some knowledgeable people assert that much of the drop in the murder rate has more to do with improved medical care than with an actual reduction in violent attacks, shootings, stabbings, clubbings, etc.
Over the years medical care has improved, statring with the 911 system, then on to more and better trained EMT's, more and better emergency vehicles, more and better eqipped emergency rooms and, last but not least, ever improving trauma care training, techniques and equipment available to EMT's, and Emergency Room staff.
An excellent point. Just as the same advances means there are a LOT fewer dead Americans from Iraq and Afghanistan than would have been the case in previous decades.
Murder rate is one of the few crime rates that’s more or less readily comparable across jurisdictions and decades. After all, either there’s a dead guy or not. Other crime comparisons are subject to definitional problems.
I haven’t researched it in some time, but if I remember correctly the total violent crime rate has declined in a way similar to the rate for murder. So it seems unlikely that the entire murder rate decline is an consequence of improved medical care.
For instance, the total number of violent crimes went down from 1.4M in 2008 to 1.2M in 2011, before rebounding slightly in 2012.
All the statistics are on that website and somebody can certainly thrash out whether murder has gone down faster than total violent crime. Or, indeed the opposite is also possible.