Could 2025 See the Lowest Murder Rate Ever Recorded?

While it's too early to say for sure, the data are extremely encouraging.

One of the most predictable clichés in journalism is "if it bleeds, it leads"—the idea that media have a bias for salacious, grisly stories. Like many stereotypes, it's very much based in truth, which might explain why plummeting murder rates nationwide have not managed to capture national attention.

Despite a news cycle that prioritizes doom, the U.S. has seen that decline take hold over the last couple of years, with the murder rate in 2024 not just falling from the 2020 spike but returning to pre-COVID levels. That brings us to the present, and to a question: Could 2025 see the lowest murder rate ever recorded?

It's possible.

The primary caveat, of course, is that the year is not over. But the initial numbers show a record low is within the realm of possibility—an amazing turn of events, particularly when considering the murder increase five years ago, which at times felt apocalyptic.

So what are the numbers? In surveying some of the most homicide-prone cities nationwide, crime data analyst Jeff Asher recently found more than a 20 percent decrease in murders from 2024. That's encouraging in isolation, but even more so when remembering that last year, too, saw a sharp decline, and 2023 before that. A sampling: As of early May, murders were down 31.6 percent in Baltimore, 34.5 percent in St. Louis, 36.8 percent in Cleveland, 63 percent in Denver, 30.6 percent in New Orleans, 26.8 percent in New York, and 23.7 percent in Chicago.

For an even more up-to-date example, Philadelphia had recorded 88 homicides as of May 22, according to the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) crime dashboard. On May 22, 2021, that number was 201. Indeed, 88 is the lowest year-to-date homicide number that the PPD has listed on its dashboard for this same period—January 1 to May 22—tying with years 2014 and 2015. (2014 currently holds the record for the lowest national murder rate ever recorded.)

"Running the numbers suggests that a 10 percent or more decline in murder nationally in 2025 would roughly tie 2014," writes Asher, co-founder of AH Analytics. (The numbers, thus far, are much better than that, although that could of course change.) "But it's fairly clear that a decline in the direction we're currently seeing would safely give 2025 the title of lowest US murder rate ever recorded."

A common point of pushback in the debate around crime rates is the notion that many offenses simply aren't reported to police. "That concern is a very legitimate one—for certain crimes," I wrote last year in discussing the 2024 murder rate decline. "Tracking burglaries, for example, is notoriously difficult; the bulk of people simply don't report them. Murders, however, are usually reported to police." That doesn't mean law enforcement will actually solve the crime: About 58 percent of murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases were cleared in 2023, according to data on Statista, which means for crime reporting purposes, the case was solved. While there's obviously work to be done there—and while data collection is by no means perfect—it is typically pretty hard to hide a body.

But what about the idea that we're merely coming off a murder uptick, so this is nothing to celebrate? "Fewer people are being killed than they were during a major homicide increase" is not compelling messaging, to be sure. But that's not what's happening here. We're not talking about a record decline after a precipitous surge; we're talking about a record low, period. While it's still possible that won't pan out, the fact that it's even on the table after a bloody few years is such good news that journalists might even consider leading with it.

Comments

[bye]

Billy has bought the MUCH-discredited Steven Pinker view.

https://www.thenandnow.co/2023/09/26/steven-pinker-is-wrong-about-the-decline-of-violence/

And Winston Churchill unqualifiedly said "the 20 th centure is the bloodiest in history"
Historians in Darker Angels of our Nature deliver a devastating debunking to Steven Pinker’s liberal imperialist theory of violence in history, finds Dominic Alexander
https://www.counterfire.org/article/the-darker-angels-of-our-nature-refuting-the-pinker-theory-of-history-and-violence-book-review/

[Stupid Government Tricks]

I don't think Pinker's view is MUCH discredited. I read his book and have my own arguments with it, but I also think he got a lot right.

Adding to your list:

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-prehistoric-psychopath/

I tried quoting and formatting some of it, let's see how well this works.

ETA: Had to redo the table formatting, those tags are not allowed.

Everything following is a quote.

There is longstanding disagreement on this issue among scholars: many hold the cultural assumption that humans are by nature bellicose, but there is also a 'noble savage' camp that believe the opposite. Stephen Pinker's influential 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature tipped the scales by using a data-oriented approach to demonstrate that prehistoric people tended towards extremely high violent death rates, with average rates of violence higher than during the peak years of World War Two.

However, Pinker's data also showed that prehistoric hunter gatherers seem to have been less violent than prehistoric agriculturalists. This is of critical importance in understanding human history because for 96 percent of our evolutionary history, we were hunter gatherers.

For the first 290,000 years of our species' approximately 300,000 year history, everyone was a hunter gatherer. In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker argued that hunter gatherers were extremely violent. Better Angels claims that at least 14 percent of prehistoric hunter gatherers died violently. This equates to a violent death rate of at least 420 per 100,000 people per year, using data on typical hunter gatherer mortality rates.

This is a much higher rate of violence than almost anywhere in the modern world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. To put it in perspective, global deaths from all types of violence between 2004–21 were around 8 per 100,000 people per year. Even the most violent cities in the world today, in Northern Brazil, South Africa, and on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border, have murder rates of only around 100 per 100,000 per year.

Our 2022 study examined both the ethnographic data – contemporary studies of groups that existed until some modern contact – and archeological data on hunter gatherer violence, much of which comes from data gathered after the publication of Better Angels. We reviewed quantitative estimates of rates of violence in ethnographies, filtering for groups that are most representative of our pre-agricultural ancestors. Our archeological estimates are based on reanalyzing a dataset developed by Gomez et al. (which was released after Better Angels was published and has dozens of extra samples), which attempts to measure rates of violent death by looking for evidence of trauma to skeletal remains. Our study produced estimates for lethal violence around four times lower than Pinker's figures.

Estimated annual rate of violent deaths per 100,000 people

Hunter gatherer (median of ethnographic estimates) --- 124

Pre-agricultural (adjusted archeological estimates) --- 103

Subsistence farming (median of ethnographic estimates) --- 595

Early agricultural (adjusted archeological estimates) --- 277

Global twentieth century death rate from wars, genocides, homicides --- 75

Global violent death rate between 2000–2019 --- 8

Estimated share of deaths from violence between members of the same species

Mammals --- 0.3%

Apes --- 1.8%

Primates --- 2.3%

Hunter gatherers (archeological sources) --- 3.4%

Hunter gatherers (ethnographic sources) --- 3.7%

The defining characteristic that drives high rates of violent death in our species is not our proclivity for lethal violence but rather our capacity for it. Human beings are unusually vulnerable to violence. We have massive heads, thin skin, puny muscles, little to no protective fur; we can't fly, swim, or burrow away, and we're not even very good at running away. Our children are even more fragile, particularly as babies, and take ages to mature.

At the same time, our offensive abilities make us the most lethal species on the planet. Violent attacks in a hunter gatherer context are essentially undefendable. We have abilities to collectively organize, plan, and deceive far in advance of any other species. Even lions are afraid of us. Our stone-tipped tools, poisons, and projectile technology appear to have killed off almost all of the planet's megafauna, like mastodons, giant kangaroos, and saber-tooth tigers.

Hunter gatherers prefer restraint because they understand that violent aggression inevitably exposes them to retaliatory violence. In one study of Amazonian societies, 70 percent of killings were motivated by revenge, and Paul Roscoe reports that his database of over 1,000 military actions in New Guinea small-scale societies shows that 61 percent were revenge based. Our violent proclivities are largely retaliatory rather than aggressive.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

It's been a while since I read Better Angels, so what follows is necessarily somewhat faded and inaccurate.

My own gripe with Better Angels is that he ascribes the reduction in violence to the emergence of government. I detest government. I think it not just incompetent but evil, and incapable of being patched up. As long as government exists, it attracts the corrupt and lazy and power-hungry. So there's my bias against Better Angels.

But I think more likely culprits are agriculture and industrialization. Agriculture turned people into enticing stationary targets for the lazy. A crop just before harvest is a tempting target for robbers, both foreign and domestic, and what is more natural than the domestic bullies to get all the farmers to band together to protect their crops from the roving lazy robbers? Thus government.

What turned the tables was industrialization. Raw farm land had less attraction. You needed mines, factories, roads, etc, all impossible to raid at harvest time. You needed an occupation army, and those are expensive.

Mass production also made individual things less worth stealing. Sure, there's more to steal, but less need. And thieves have their own property to protect. A nomad has no possessions to protect except the horse he's riding and the weapons he's carrying. Your food is an easy target and he doesn't care how much ancillary damage he causes. Modern people have possessions, a home, and there are easier ways to get things than theft. Of course some people still steal, but not on the scale of before.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Star Trek's post-scarcity economy always annoyed me, but I think the trend is correct. In the 1700s, as mass production was beginning, people had very few possessions, and they were mostly functional and primitive. There are tallies of wills and what people left when they died, and it's mostly chairs, a table, a bed, plates, and a few blankets. As you get into the 1800s, textile mills and factory clothes were so much cheaper that people had money left to buy clocks, for instance. Most people today have no idea how poor we all were just 100 or 200 years ago. The President's son got a blister while playing tennis and died from the infection -- in 1924! I can eat Korean food in 5 minutes because freezers and microwaves are so cheap -- John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in the world 100 years ago, couldn't get it without a long ocean voyage.

There's just a lot less reason to steal and kill nowadays. I doubt we'll ever get to Star Trek's post-scarcity world, but we're always getting closer.

[Overt]

While I think I agree about the What, I think the Why is a little different. I think it has a lot to do with technologies freeing men to risk their lives in battle.

Through most pre-history, using weapons was rather difficult. If you were close to a clan, generally you fought honor battles- a small number of people running at each other with a club, and then after a few brutal strikes, one clan backs down. It was bad for a tribe to lose its hunters to battles*. Even serious injury could be catastrophic for a tribe as they no longer can hunt or protect foraging grounds. So the better move was generally to decide you've lost quickly and then abandon your grounds to the victor. (And by the way, you need to be careful when talking about "violent deaths". Most studies I have seen from the ice-age indicate that violent death happened during hunting, not battles. Hunting mammoths and other big game was notoriously dangerous.)

When we reach antiquity, the magic technology is cultivation. Now your hunters are less important as a food source, and can concentrate on being soldiers. Your foraging grounds that often required migration are now static, allowing you to choose and build defenses. You can afford to send your men to battle and if they die, generally it isn't catastrophic for your populace.

This allowed the development of Army technologies, where each soldier may not be as strong or physically capable as the enemy, but the better battlefield tactics nullify the advantage. Again, instead of your tribe starving because your best hunter is dead, an army can lose a good soldier who is replaced by the next trainee. Egyptian chariots, archers and axemen were very good at subduing tribesmen, and even newer armies. Later the pike ruled the battlefield, and then for hundreds of years, the Roman legion.

The rise of the firearm had two effects. First it led to democracy. No longer could a king and his favored strongmen bully the masses into being their serfs- confident that no peasant could possibly train or get access to the steel necessary to seriously threaten a knight and his squires (they were too busy living hand to mouth). But the firearm suddenly meant a man trained over a few weeks can kill a knight who trained since boyhood. It is no coincidence that the advent of bow-and-arrow led to the start of rights for commoners, and the adoption of firearms accelerated and finalized that transition.

But again, the firearm also meant you had more disposable men to feed into war. In the medieval era, knights were precious. It took years and money to turn a child into the deadly weapon on the battlefield. And we indeed see that many rules of chivalry and war are basically designed to settle battles with minimal death to these knights- protecting the investment. Now any peasant could become a soldier, and so you send them to war by the tens of millions by WWII.

Industrialization did the same. It wasn't about resources, it is that Industrialization created more productivity. More productivity meant fewer people needed to produce and therefore more men to send to battle.

So fundamentally, it is about technologies that allowed you to spare men from supporting the tribe, kingdom or state and instead dedicate to battle. Yes there is more tempting targets out there, as you said, but the real issue is that the consequences of a loss go down with these technologies, making the reward of capturing resources more valuable. And yes, the direct cause of this is government. The death of a father of 5 is catastrophic for a family, but no big deal to the King or President. It took enormous losses to put a dent in a country's ability to feed itself. And the potential reward for a leader in glory or self riches was too great to be concerned about those peasants they fed into the grinder.

*: (We even have evolved traits in men to drive this type of fighting. Ever watch a football game where the "better team" gets beat by a couple crazy plays early, then just folds? That's because men who suffer a major defeat trigger drops in their testosterone and adrenaline levels- making them physically less capable of fighting. The evolved reason is that men who calmed down and didn't continue to fight a better opponent were more likely to live. )

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Hunting mammoths probably takes less skill than hunting other humans who are trying to hunt you instead of just trying to get away.

Archery takes a lot of practice no matter what the target is, even just firing them at area targets like an army, which is why English kings made archery mandatory for all able bodied men.

Firearms were the big game changer, not archery.

[Overt]

"Hunting mammoths probably takes less skill than hunting other humans who are trying to hunt you instead of just trying to get away."

I'm not sure this is germane...or true. Have you ever hunted? 90% of the problem is getting within shooting distance of your prey. This could take a lot of time, and have many days of misses. If you could get on a mammoth, you didn't have a high-powered rifle. You had to get right up to it and stab it with a spear. There are many studies showing many bone and ligament injuries in pre-historic men, consistent with trying to take down a large animal. But in the end, it doesn't matter. Women and children weren't taking down mammoths. The men who would be needed for battle were the hunters. For a tribe, your men were needed for protection and hunting, so every man in a small clan who was killed in battle could not hunt or protect the tribe- regardless of which one takes more skill. Anthropologically speaking, this led to battles between hunter-gatherers being more about shows of force (think Maui war dances, or counting coup, or African battle-line dances) - these are all strategies to test two parties without destroying a precious resource.

Again- take a look at existing hunter gatherer tribes, and this is common. Most that engage in battle do so in this manner. Further, another evolutionary strategy is to slaughter non-combatants. Kill the women and children, and the tribe is sure to starve. You see this in many stories of tribes that kill undefended missionaries or great victories where tribes of native Americans slaughtered enemy camps while the men were away.

"Archery takes a lot of practice no matter what the target is, even just firing them at area targets like an army, which is why English kings made archery mandatory for all able bodied men."

Yes this is why I said it only began with the bow and arrow. At the Battle of Agincourt, Welsh longbowman basically ended the dynasties of hundreds of French noble lines. But, as you say, it required significant investment in time to learn to use the longbow. It is noteworthy that the English were the first to really make bows a useful weapon and create a population of longbow men, and they were the first to really begin ceding autonomy to common men. I don't think it was a coincidence. As England developed a large population of commoners with the means to kill a knight, the king couldn't rely on those knights to maintain absolute rule. It is also noteworthy that in OTHER countries, kings and lords forbade longbows- precisely because they were dangerous to the lords.

"Firearms were the big game changer, not archery."

We are in agreement. Which is why I said the advent of firearms "accelerated and finalized that transition" (which to me is the same as saying "changed the game").

What the bow and arrow proves is that it is the ability of a commoner to kill their lords- regardless of the specific tech- is what gets people their rights (a side digression, to be sure). The key point is that in return for giving commoners their franchise, Governments get MORE resources to feed into the grinder.

What Kings (and many rulers today) never realized was that if you unleash freedom, productivity skyrockets. Even though you don't command as large a share of the economy, you nevertheless will still live richer than the totalitarian kings of the past- because even a fraction of the wealth is so much more than the economies under totalitarian regimes.

So the great "Political" technology is these Elite's ability to give people token freedoms, and then sending them off to die to enrich those Elites. The Chinese have mastered this art, but American Presidents have definitely been runners up. The Biden war in Ukraine is an interesting twist- Biden was sending thousands of Ukrainians into the grinder to make American Elites more money.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

"90% of the problem is getting within shooting distance of your prey. This could take a lot of time, and have many days of misses"

Not a problem with enemy soldiers.

[Overt]

Again, I'm not really sure why this is germane. In prehistoric and hunter gatherer societies, there is no such thing as a soldier. They were all hunter strongmen going at each other. If a hunter-gatherer ever met a soldier, they'd be swiftly integrated into a growing empire.

Again, the point here is that regardless of whether it is harder to kill prey or a human, you can do NEITHER if you are dead. Even the victor of a battle between two tribes could be in deep shit if its casualties were high enough. And so the point remains that the "Winning" strategy in conflict between two tribes was battles that quickly ended, or ostentatious shows of force that convinced your enemy not to fight in the first place.

[Bloodaxe]

I think both of you focus somewhat too much on battles, you also have to consider in-group violence. This is one of the things that differentiates us from chimps and bonobos, they have much, much higher rates of routine, in-group, "low-level" violence than humans do.

[Overt]

Well, we are talking about "Murder", not low-level violence, so this isn't really germane.

That said, most tribes have achieved a level of equilibrium. Yes there can be some violence, but a tribe whose members are regularly killing or seriously injuring each other will quickly starve to death or be killed by other competitors. There are some fascinating documentary series where people go live in hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon or Malaysia and you can see very rigid systems in place. The chief is a strongman and can enforce his rules that way, but rarely is a person killed or seriously injurred.

Again, it is a human trait that when we think we are defeated, our body triggers a bunch of chemical changes, reducing testosterone and adrenaline so that we are less likely to continue a fight that we are losing. This is probably co-evolved specifically for tribal living.

[bye]

By your thinking you should be opposing the hugely selective abortion of females

Marriage squeeze: The skewed sex ratio at birth has resulted in a significant gender imbalance, with millions more men than women in China. This has led to a "marriage squeeze", where a large number of young men face difficulty finding brides.
Surplus males: This creates a situation with millions of "surplus males" who are unable to marry and form families, which can lead to various social challenges, including potential social instability.

How many males ?
a significant gender imbalance, with millions more males than females. This disparity is estimated to be around 34 million according to official sources in 2016 or as high as 37 million according to another source from 2013. The imbalance is more pronounced in younger age groups, with men under 20 exceeding their female counterparts by 32 million in 2009.

[Overt]

You can recognize these things are facts, without agreeing that we "should be" favoring any coercive policy.

It is noteworthy, that your analysis is exactly why societies, especially successful modern ones, tend towards pair-bonding rather than polyamorous relationships. Contrary to Heinlein's fun, but fantastical, "Moon is a Harsh Mistress", a society with few women rarely gives women more power. Instead, the men tend to organize into gangs, where women are enslaved and passed around like chattel between a select group. If you are going to share your woman, it is better to share her with people you know and control.

In societies with harem systems, whether it is many middle eastern nations, or several Fundamentalist Mormon compounds in the US, you see that men organize society around getting the powerful access to women- again using them as bargaining chips to cement power. Men learn to follow the rules, or they are imprisoned, sent to war, or exiled.

Over history, women are rarely given freedom to choose. Indeed, the freedom to choose is rather rare for humans throughout history, and Men have evolved specific physical and social tools to ensure that if any select few can choose, they can at least fight for that right. It isn't cheery or nice, but that is the way it is.

China will be interesting. Right now, we basically see an authoritarian Elite who have the power to ensure they have access to the fewer women. Will those women begin to wield more power? So far, looking at who is running the country, the answer is a firm no.

[bye]

Here is a massively unthinking and poorly-written sentence. Ready?
"You can recognize these things are facts, without agreeing that we "should be" favoring any coercive policy."

Let's just point out a few things
--- Any policy must be based on facts right off the bat while trying to say nothing is indicated he labels an actual policy ahead of time as 'coercive' ? WHAAAT

----Tons of literatute substantiates unmarried males 24-32 as the leaders in almost every category of violence, social unrest, drugs, perversion....George Gilder has the facts on that

----------How can the undeniable (at least by him undenied) fact of such a huge predilection for killing female babies not call for a coercive policy if it calls for any policy???????????????
https://invisiblegirlproject.org/about-female-gendercide/

------ The ambiguity of "favoring any coercive policy" ...could mean favoring any policy because all are coervice or could mean some policy (non-coercive) but not a coercive policy.

-----and a psychological observation : How could such a dramatic 'fact' be met with such a emotionless distant uncaring shrug?
Tens of milliions of unrooted young males :This disparity is estimated to be around 34 million according to official sources in 2016 or as high as 37 million according to another source from 2013. The imbalance is more pronounced in younger age groups, with men under 20 exceeding their female counterparts by 32 million in 2009. THAT IS MAJOR TROUBLE...I've seen articles in specialist national security periodicals saying it is obviously the greatest threat of all since China could spare tens of millions of agressive males in any military attack

[Overt]

You suggested that certain facts (negative consequences of fewer females) compell one to favor a coercive policy- specifically prohibiting the selective abortion of females.

To unpack my criticism, it is important to agree on why this opposition is considered coercive, instead of reactive? After all, laws against murder are not coercive- they are reactive or retaliatory. The act of trying to kill someone is the coercive force. Intervening (even before hand) to stop that initiation of force is reactive, not coercive.

But your sentence, by its construction, assumes that abortion is not murder and therefore, not coercion. If abortion were murder, we wouldn't need to oppose solely the selective murder of female babies, because the real crime is abortion, regardless of the gender of the fetus.

So if abortion itself isn't initiation of force, people have the right to abort babies. But you say the state should step in and stop that because if we don't have enough girls, it creates social problems that you don't like. You are saying that coercion (interfering with a person's right to act freely, including aborting a fetus) is justified by certain facts about social pressures.

And yet, why is that the reason we must ban something that you otherwise imply people have the right to do? Alcohol consumption has lots of negative effects on society. As does drug use. And owning guns. And driving cars. And having free speech and freedom of association. All these things can be shown to have negative consequences to society. (And positive consequences, to be sure.)

My point to you was that the existence of these facts (negative consequences of female depopulation) don't automatically mean we must (or should) want them banned. I can acknowledge the factual negative consequences of drugs, and still recognize that the drug war is even worse, and that the loss of rights to humans is not justified. Likewise, if I believed people had the right to abortions (for the record, I do not, as I believe it is murder, but that is not a debate to have now), then I could acknowledge that selective abortions cause some negative consequences, but still accept that a ban is worse than these consequences.

Contrary to your claim that all policies must be based on "facts"- I think it is much more nuanced. Empirical facts are messy and often wrong. Great harm is done when people try to rule by studies and The Science!™

On the other hand, facts derived from logic and moral axioms are a GREAT place to make policy. If it is a fact that abortion is logically moral, then you should have some other reasoned logic that explains why selective abortion is suddenly immoral- not just "produces results I don't like".

[TrickyVic (old school)]

""My own gripe with Better Angels is that he ascribes the reduction in violence to the emergence of government.""

A bigger stick with immunity?

[mad.casual]

Hunter gatherer (median of ethnographic estimates) --- 124

This is both a wild ass guess and the larger assembly falls for the usual absolute vs. relative fallacy.

Namely, you can see in the genetic record where the Y-chromosome variability bottlenecks but the X and mitochondrial DNA does not. In pre-history, this indicates relatively open warfare among male tribesmen (as famine or weather would kill men and women more equally) and relatively as culture or practice rather than as lead by one or a few sociopaths.

I'd argue that the interpretation of HG vs. Subsistence/Early Ag is precisely backwards in a survivorship bias fashion. When we find HG skeletons, *if* we find HG skeletons, we virtually always find they were subject to copious injury and/or violence, even if it didn't kill them. Whereas, with Subsistence/Early Ag, we tend to find the skeletons that were all accumulated or killed in place.

Conversely, the global twentieth century death rates can predominantly be explained by a handful or two of individuals.

Our stone-tipped tools, poisons, and projectile technology appear to have killed off almost all of the planet's megafauna, like mastodons, giant kangaroos, and saber-tooth tigers.

This is pretty flatly wrong. Not only is there plenty of megafauna that persists throughout history, before man, and into the current day, much of the megafauna that exists is smaller than its predecessors and, again, the trend predates human predation. We are good predators and good pack predators but the decline of the megafauna is much, much larger than humankind.

Hunter gatherers prefer restraint...
Our violent proclivities are largely retaliatory rather than aggressive.

This is completely spurious and generally irrelevant to the post/point. Subsistence farming lead to 595 deaths per 100k, if it's 590 revenge-killings and 5 homicides (for every X visited upon us it shall be returned 10-fold) does that make them as 'peaceful' or non-psycho/sociopathic than us?

[Rick James]

does that make them as 'peaceful' or non-psycho/sociopathic than us?

I would say it makes them mostly peaceful.

[bye]

Very dumb and self-important. Takes morality, decency, human rights -- everything most people judge violence by and just casts it to the side.

Take this immensely stupid abuse of words
" Our violent proclivities are largely retaliatory rather than aggressive." This MUST mean that you are retaliating against an agression !!! What else could it mean

a fine PhD Statistics absolutely gutted Steven Pinker's claim
https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/4417/

AND

https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/16012/

Pinker likes to flirt with science and math but the real stuff makes a mockery of his shallow-minded Pollyanna contention

[Zeb]

I don't think that really discredits the arguments. Yes, if you want to talk about all violent death, then the 20th century might give some others a run for their money. But people have always had horrible wars pretty regularly. I would argue that technology allowed war in the 20th century to be done at a scale and with efficiency never seen before. 20th century wars were pretty terrible, but I bet Assyrians would have done worse in terms of death and destruction if they had had the technology.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

38 million died as a result of war in the 20th century. Somewhere between 100 and 110* million died as a direct result of communism [man made starvation--Holodomor for example--mass deportations and incarcerations, pogroms and persecutions and of course good old executions]; regardless, is it so much of a reach to see that government, specifically a government with too much power, is the source of all of this?

* "One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is s statistic" said the man who would know.

[Zeb]

No not a reach at all. Without large, powerful governments who think they have a mandate to run everything, you don't get world wars or communism or nazism.
I guess what I'm getting at is that people living their lives, not those in armies or running governments, are more peaceful and less likely to die violently than in most of human existence. If we could just stop having governments who claim effectively unlimited powers, we could improve the overall situation more.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

"If we could just stop having governments who claim effectively unlimited powers, we could improve the overall situation more."

+ X 100; I believe that is, or should be, the entire point of libertarianism.

[bye]

AN immediate retreat into hypotheticals and contrafactuals. If the Assyrians had the technology !!!!!

It idescredits the arguments.

[bye]

Bu that is my point that you are making!!
I go with Maritain's answer : Yes , the good have gotten better, but the evil have gotten worse.

[Roberta]

Could it be that, thanks to the uptick, the people who needed killing have already been killed?

[Quo Usque Tandem]

"As of early May, murders were down 31.6 percent in Baltimore, 34.5 percent in St. Louis, 36.8 percent in Cleveland, 63 percent in Denver, 30.6 percent in New Orleans, 26.8 percent in New York, and 23.7 percent in Chicago."

Yes, you could argue that [there must be a shortage of thugs to kill one another, and we will have to await the next gen or so to replenish that demographic].

[Don't look at me! (#1 on the “muted” list!)]

This is why we need a continuous stream of border jumpers to keep the stats from falling.

[JesseAz (Prime Meanster of Sarcasia)]

There was a study in Chicago a few years back that showed murders down, then on a footnote shootings were up. Quicker response due to shot tracker and better medical care for gun shots.

[bye]

I lived in New Orleans and St Louis...I remember someone getting murdered about noontime right outside the downtown library inSTL

Even then the Pinker-style rhetoric was around but residents weren't buying it. As for New Orleans, even worse. Cars plowing into paraders, 10 men busing out of jail (meaning MANY accomplices) Is it perhaps you can't break the truth of the following so you are trying to MUTE it ????

27 of Top 30 Crime-Ridden Cities Run by Democrats
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20230417/115663/HHRG-118-JU00-20230417-SD001.pdf

Yes, NOLA and STL are hugely Democratic run

Oops. lived in Memphis , they had a rising crime rate. Not sure about now , been 20 years

[Stupid Government Tricks]

It could also be the crappy statistics. Reason has had pushback before from quoting only one set of statistics and ignoring that some of the biggest and most crime-ridden cities stopped reporting some data. A lot of cities have even stopped investigating and prosecuting "minor" crimes, which also skews the statistics.

[charliehall]

The statistics are from local police departments. Are you saying that they are all lying?

Disconnect your tinfoil hat.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

How many unreported murders are occurring? Further, how would you know?

[Vernon Depner]

the people who needed killing have already been killed?

That's similar to the theory that legal abortion lowered the crime rate.

[bye]

abortion has increased the national hate rate. Would be surprising if abortion didn't also directly increase violence

Take coerced abortions

Around the country countless women have been coerced into an abortion that they did not want. Studies show that nearly 70% of women who get an abortion described their experience as inconsistent with their own values and one in four describe the abortion as coerced or unwanted. Joining us this week to are experts Lovette Vassar and Tessa Cox to discuss the terrible reality of coerced abortions.

https://lifeissues.org/straight-talk-on-life-issues/the-tragic-reality-of-coerced-abortions/

[Michael Ejercito]

The Colorado State Legislature did not get the memo.

https://reason.com/2025/04/15/colorado-will-soon-require-a-discretionary-permit-to-acquire-semiautomatic-rifles/

[Stupid Government Tricks]

And they won't as long as Roberts and the squishies play politics.

[Eeyore]

A discretionary permit that might end up always arbitrarily denied or just never reviewed.

[Michael Ejercito]

And the people who enacted this law whine about due process for illegal aliens...

[Vernon Depner]

The only acceptable murders with firearms are those committed with handguns by Black young men. White boys with rifles shooting people can't be tolerated.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Kulture, you know.

[Don't look at me! (#1 on the “muted” list!)]

with the murder rate in 2024 not just falling from the 2020 spike but returning to pre-COVID levels.

Well, duhh! Covid killed everybody.

[charliehall]

"Covid killed everybody."

According to the COVID disinformationists, COVID is just the flu.

[Use the Schwartz]

According to the COVID disinformationists, COVID is just the flu.

It is now.

Have you seen the latest data on covid vaccine uptake? Look it up.

According to you information is disinformation? That totally tracks - Harvard Man...

[Use the Schwartz]

Also Re: Covid

"Very inconvenient for Dems that they can't weaponize this issue anymore."

Right back atcha Chuck.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Expect MSM to ignore this as much as possible, as it does not support gun control. The only acceptable way for homicides to decrease is to have an assault weapons ban, of those particular kinds of guns that are responsible for about 350 deaths in any given year. Only then may a decline in homicides be celebrated, as the outcome of a visionary, intrepid, and progressive government policy.

Until then it is just inconvenient to talk about and must blame all those persons with "killer carry permits" for the mayhem.

[bye]

Is that you, Hillary ???

Take this woman
Texas mother accused of helping son plan school shooting
15 May 2025
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c057l60y1r3o

Take away the guns and you still have a mother and son that would gladly kill random little kids when and if they can.
Taking away the gun does NOTHING

Is that you, Hillary??

[Idaho-Bob]

Ah, the classic article about crime statistics, and the photo is a hand holding a gun.

Cocker spaniel attacks toddler, the accompanying pic is a pitbull.

Every criminal on TV crime dramas is a white dude.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Taurus PT 92 ["Brazlian Beretta"], probably from JD's collection. Just picked one [NIB] for unbelievable price of $285; going to be a project gun that I will completely disassemble, polish the hammer and sear, and replace all the springs. Should reduce the trigger pull considerably and smooth it out.

Otherwise agree with your post re misleading pics that belie the content of the article.

[Eeyore]

Could 2025 See the Lowest Murder Rate Ever Reported?

[Social Justice is neither]

There is a Republican in office so I'd expect Democrat governors to reverse previous guidance on withholding stats.

[Benitacanova]

No, they got this down. Anything good this year is a leftover Biden effect. Anything bad.... orange.

[bye]

Except immigrants here illegally incl Tren de Aragua and MS-13 are major murderers. Either way the article is acutally bad news. Why celebrate murders down x% when it logicallly means that if you took out illegals it would be much more. :Hey, good news, your uncle was killed but you aunt wasn't" !!
By any reasoning this shows we could do something that we are not doing. "Hey your grandmom died of a fentanyl overdose, good news it was half of the usual overdose we've seen. Progress, eh "

[Overt]

"A common point of pushback in the debate around crime rates is the notion that many offenses simply aren't reported to police"

No a common pushback is that these "Crime is Decreasing" pundits are cherrypicking their data to fit a narrative. Sullum on this very site has posted "Don't believe your lying eyes" reports insisting the crime is down based on FBI data that was later HEAVILY REVISED.

https://crimeresearch.org/2024/09/new-2023-fbi-crime-data-is-out-fbi-data-adjusted-for-previous-years-in-2022-fbi-had-previously-shown-a-2-1-is-now-up-4-5/

TL;DR: The FBI has consistently revised crime data, just as the Bureau of Labor has constantly revised job estimates. Originally, Sullum crowed about how Trump was a liar for saying crime was going up, pointing to exactly these crime statistics.

Binion seems to be settling on some survey different than the FBI, but, see, that is why this cherry-picking is so dangerous. He will snidely condescend on people using his chosen data source as a club when those people may have a different impression based on perfectly valid data from a different source.

[charliehall]

Idiot. The stats come not from the FBI but from local police departments. And most cities are in fact seeing huge drops in homicides.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

I want to know about these unreported homicides that keep getting left out, and mostly how those who decry this omission even "know" about it at all [beyond speculating that it just cannot, in the absence of an assault weapons ban, be true].

[Overt]

If I am an idiot then so are the Reason writers. As I noted, folk like Ciaramella and Sullum have relied upon the FBI reports to declare crime victory (at least when the FBI data agreed with their worldview- not so much now that it has been revised).

Obviously, you don't understand what the FBI data is...probably because you are a brain-addled ignoramus. I would enlighten you, but such a task seems impossible given the impairments you demonstrate here, daily.

For those who may be reading and do not know, the FBI data is based on police reports. Every year, the FBI takes automated data from police precincts around the country as a part of the Unified Crime Reporting Program, which they post to their site. Pretty much every news agency relies on this, or a separate National Crime Victimization Survey by the Bureau of Justice when reporting about crime trends.

The interesting thing is that in 2021 or so, the FBI changed its reporting API and hundreds of precincts suddenly couldn't report numbers, and so the FBI started using automated extrapolation and other opaque methods to determine the crime trends. My understanding as of late 2024 was that many cities like Los Angeles still did not report.

Strangely, despite this loss of source data, the FBI reported results on time each year, showing major decreases in crime which were parroted by many news outlets, including Reason. This was made very interesting by the fact that the NCVS survey disagreed sharply with the data being reported. And low and behold, in late 2024, the FBI restated many of its statistics showing that indeed, while 2021 had a sharp decrease in crime from the Lockdown Spike, 2022 - 24 were showing modest increases.

Now, interestingly, Billy is focused on murders only. Which is fine, though often used by people to rebut more general concerns about crime, or violent crime. This is, of course, bullshit. If rapes have doubled, but murder is down 10%, people aren't more safe- since rapes already affected a greater percentage of the population.

[bye]

Still, statistically hugely suspect
27 of Top 30 Crime-Ridden Cities Run by Democrats

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20230417/115663/HHRG-118-JU00-20230417-SD001.pdf

[Yuno Hoo]

So what are the numbers?

Don't forget to include the numbers of shootings (incl. shot detections) and woundings (incl. shock trauma "successes").

[Use the Schwartz]

They don't include that data since it tends to cluster in inconvenient places.

[Eeyore]

Maybe with the uptick in miserably lonely middle aged cat ladies - they are saving their lives from the #1 cause of murder - living with a husband.

[Torguud]

"...the #1 cause of murder - living with a husband.." Yes, but If the lady owns 50% of everything you created....

[Vernon Depner]

I don't have the stats, but I suspect living with Mom's Boyfriend is substantially more dangerous than living with a husband/dad.

[Eeyore]

Passes the sniff test. Plausible.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

If "living with a husband" is the number one source of homicide, I should have killed several wives by now [but somehow have not killed the one I have for 40 years...].

Gotta love those statistical predictors.

[John Rohan]

Meanwhile, illegal immigration is down 94% over last year. Just a coincidence??

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-crossings-u-s-mexico-border-down-94-percent-border-patrol-chief-says/

[Rick James]

Amazing what happens when you fire a few soros prosecutors, recall a few corrupt, BLM mayors, pinch off the border and start arresting people again.

[John Rohan]

But according to Reason, illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes, so crime should be going up not down!

[Vernon Depner]

Illegal immigrants are unlikely to report crimes committed against them by other illegal immigrants. This is especially true for female victims.

[charliehall]

Philadelphia still has its "Soros prosecutor". So does Manhattan. And violent crime rates keep plumetting.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

Refund the police and crime goes down?

[Rick James]

The city of Seattle literally approved a public resolution that "DefundThePolice" was an utter failure.

That's just how hard blue cities have been in reverse gear. Sorry David Simon, your idea was tried and it failed. Buh bye.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

I entire notion of defund the police was a ludicrous non starter; it was just politically expedient to jump and that band wagon for a short ride, until the dust settle a bit.

[bye]

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20230417/115663/HHRG-118-JU00-20230417-SD001.pdf

27 of Top 30 Crime-Ridden Cities Run by Democrats

[charliehall]

NYC never defunded police.

[Rick James]

Oh, I know that the 2nd amendment is considered a niche constitutional issue around here at Reason now that you're all about abortion, women on the pole and "loving trannies because like, body autonomy and stuff", but it's um, still an issue to some of us:

In addition, Washington bans the sale and manufacture of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and requires new handgun models sold in the state to have childproofing features.

The state also mandates that firearms be stored locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition in certain circumstances.

Washington is considered one of the strictest states for firearm laws, ranking among the top 10 states in terms of gun law strength.

However, some argue that stricter gun control measures disproportionately impact rural communities where firearms are essential for protection and livelihood.

Despite these measures, the rate of gun deaths in Washington increased by 34% from 2014 to 2023, compared to a 33% increase nationwide.

[Idaho-Bob]

Lawmakers do not give a shit about rural dwellers. That's not where the donations originate.

I live near the WA border. I can neither confirm nor deny the amount of WA license plates in Idaho gun shop parking lots.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

The laws you reference have no impact on criminals, only on those persons who aren't the problem in the first place.

[Uncle Jay]

"Could 2025 See the Lowest Murder Rate Ever Recorded?"

It does in El Salvador now that the MS-13 gang members are locked up.

[charliehall]

In El Salvador the crime is from the government.

[Diarrheality]

Yes, Charlie, we know you enjoy fellating criminals.

[charliehall]

Very inconvenient for MAGA that it can't weaponize this issue anymore.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Cry me a river.

[Brian]

It's not possible, because there are more guns than ever. /s

[bye]

Brian, this is an embarrassing point you make. Take away all guns and you still have

Ashley Pardo of San Antonio was arrested for allegedly aiding her son's planned mass shooting at Rhodes Middle School. She supplied him with ammunition, tactical gear, and military-style clothing, despite knowing his violent intentions
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT3twSdvJtRAbAmN2z7XMRPv0QaPtkqRitl9g&s

This is what Americans began to hate about Biden. He takes a gun away from a woman and son glad to kill random children and thinks now the woman and child have become model citizens

[Alex]

2025’in şimdiye kadarki en düşük cinayet oranına sahne olması gerçekten dikkat çekici. Suç oranlarındaki bu düşüş, toplum güvenliği ve ekonomik istikrar arasında güçlü bir bağ olduğunu gösteriyor. İlginçtir ki, insanlar artık sokaktan çok dijital dünyada zaman geçiriyor. Bu da riskli davranışları azaltıyor olabilir. Özellikle çevrim içi eğlenceye yönelenlerin sayısı artıyor. Ben de sık sık bu siteyi 1xbet kullanıyorum; hem kafa dağıtmak hem de gündemden uzaklaşmak için birebir. Cinayet oranlarındaki düşüş süreci devam ederse, sosyal yaşamın dijitalleşmesi bu tabloya ciddi katkı sunmuş olabilir.