In the New York Times today, Rogé Karma fills in for new dad Ezra Klein by interviewing sociologist Patrick Sharkey about crime and what we can do about it. Here's the introduction:
In 2020 the United States experienced a nearly 30 percent rise in homicides from 2019. That’s the single biggest one-year increase since we started keeping national records in 1960. And violence has continued to rise well into 2021.
To deny or downplay the seriousness of this spike is neither morally justified nor politically wise. Violence takes lives, traumatizes children, instills fear, destroys community life and entrenches racial and economic inequality....Liberals and progressives need an answer to the question of how to handle rising violence.
This language is a little fuzzy, so I just want to remind everyone that the real mystery has to do not with murder and violent crime, but with murder versus violent crime:
As you can see, for 30 years the murder and violent crime rates have changed almost precisely in unison. Then, in 2020, they suddenly diverged. The big question, then, is why did murder rates spike so high even though the overall violent crime rate remained steady?
This is not the topic of the interview, which is about how we can reduce urban violence via methods other than policing. It's very much worth reading, but it's also worth keeping in mind that overall violence hasn't changed much over the past decade. Only the murder rate has. This is something that deserves some careful study.
Because in the U.S. murder is primarily committed by blacks (blacks made up 56.5% of known murder offenders the FBI's 2020 stats).
So when a racial reckoning is declared, cops back off enforcement against black lowlifes, who therefore feel safer carrying illegal handguns. More bad guys going around illegally armed means the usual disses of daily life are more likely to be met with gunfire.
Fortunately, most of the post-George Floyd incremental shooters aren't that accurate. For example, shootings were up 100% in NYC in 2020 over 2019, but murders were up only 40%.
Something similar happened with car crashes. In the seven months after George Floyd's death (June - December 2020), black traffic fatalities were up 36% over 2019, versus up 9% for the total nonblack population. During the racial reckoning, cops were less likely to pull over blacks than before, and blacks were feeling exuberant.
Gotta say this smells like racist bullshit, but I'd be willing to review your sources -- and change my mind -- if you'd care to post them and they bear out your analysis.
Mister Sailer goes way back, to at least Disqus days. He pops in from time to time, disappears for long stretches, then briefly re-emerges from his mom's basement. I suspect that there's some tie-in with the lunar eclipse cycle.
As for his content, let's just say he hasn't changed over the years.
I don’t think he’s quoting a specific study. He’s just proposing a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. It makes sense to me an I agree with him that is the major cause for spike. Not everything people say is a regurgitation of a study. But you knew that.
Arguments which purport to identify cause and effect with exact numbers and seemingly very specific facts as support are not simply speculation. They are either true or false. Either the facts support his claim or the claim is bullshit.
What’s more, he needs to have a study because his very precise number, apparently sourced to the FBI, seems contrary to the data published by the FBI.
Here are the statistics on 2020 known murder offenders released by the FBI last September:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/fbi-murders-up-4901-black-share-of-known-murder-offenders-reaches-record-56-5/
Here's my analysis and graph of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report of road fatalities by race:
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-racial-reckoning-on-the-roads/
Black traffic deaths were 55% higher in June 2020, following George Floyd's death on May 25, than in June 2019.
These are some pretty astonishing figures that have gotten zero publicity.
They got zero publicity because what you are showing is bullshit. That's what happens when racist bigots like yourself rely on other bigots for information instead of looking at the actual source of information.
Here is the official document from where the idiot that you used for info made up his own graph to scare panicky bigots like yourself.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813118
Notice how the year to year changes is completely different from what your "source" presented.
Starting in March, months before Floyd's death, fatalities had already increased to 19% over the same month in 2019, and it remained constant between 19-20% for most of the year, with the actual peak in Nov of 2020.
Thanks for taking the time to read the document. Unfortunately, but you are misinterpreting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's report's Table 2. That's understandable because their prose describing it is not terribly lucid, but you are confusing the black share of traffic fatalities in Table 2, which indeed relatively peaked in November at 21% of all traffic fatalities, with the year-over-year change in absolute number of fatalities.
Here's the quote from the NHTSA:
"As shown in Table 2, Black fatalities, as a proportion of all fatalities, increased in most months from March to December. The greatest increase occurred in June (20% [20] versus 15% [19])."
In other words, in June 2020 (following George Floyd's death on May 25, 2020), blacks comprised 20% of all traffic deaths compared to blacks making up only 15% of all traffic deaths in June 2019. It's _not_ saying that black traffic deaths went up 20% in 2019, although that misreading is understandable.
In June 2019, there were 3,189 traffic fatalities among all races, of which 15% were black, for an estimated 478 (3189 * 0.15 = 478).
In June 2020, there were 3,715 total traffic fatalities, of which 20% were black, for an estimated 743.
June 2020's 743 black road deaths was 55.3% higher than June 2019's 478 black road deaths.
"Total estimated Black fatalities increased by 23 percent from 2019 to 2020."
In other words, for the whole year, black traffic deaths were up 23%.
By my calculations, black traffic deaths were up 4.9% in January-May 2020 vs. the same time in 2019, but up an extraordinary 36.5% in June-December 2020 over Jun-Dec 2019.
As I said, almost nobody is aware of this remarkable road tragedy statistic, which sheds some light on the somewhat similar trend in homicides. Rather than be in mourning over George Floyd, it appears that the declaration of the racial reckoning after his Memorial Day death made blacks more exuberant, whether at parties or in their cars.
The cops are irrelevant. The rate surged well before Floyd due to silly lockdown s.
The big leap upwards in murders began in the days after George Floyd's death on May 25, 2020, the second coming of the Black Lives Matter era.
Here's criminology academic Richard Rosenfeld's quarterly report on weekly crime trends in a couple of dozen big cities up through the end of September 2021:
https://counciloncj.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Pandemic-Social-Unrest-and-Crime-in-US-Cities-September-2021-Update.pdf
Rosenfeld writes:
"HOMICIDE
Figure 1 displays the average weekly homicide rate in the 22 cities for which such data were available (see Appendix I). Our analysis identified a rough cyclical pattern in the homicide rate over time. The rate rose sharply, exceeding the previous seasonal peak, immediately after George Floyd’s May 2020 murder, which sparked nationwide protests against police violence. Homicide levels remained elevated through the summer before decreasing through the late fall of 2020 and the winter of 2021. Homicides rose again in the spring and summer of 2021. The number of homicides during the first three quarters of 2021 was 4% greater than during the same period in 2020. In the 22 cities studied, there were 126 more homicides between January and September of 2021 than during the same timeframe the year before (see Appendix II for city-level figures)."
My reading of the data is that murders nationally rose following Ferguson in August 2014, then drifted down during the initial Trump years, then started to drift up in mid-2019 through the initial pandemic months. Then the weeks after George Floyd's death saw a historic surge, which has largely plateaued at a new normal about 35+% more murderous than before the "racial reckoning."
Here's my graph of the giant Gun Violence Archive list of gun murders:
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-racial-reckonings-new-normal-50-murders-per-day/
I get it: You want blacks to be dangerous killers and "exuberant" bad drivers, but you forgot to control for hundreds of years of brutal repression, isolation in ghettoes, enforced poverty and a legal system perennially stacked against them.
Be a bigger bigot, I challenge you.
Well, I re-read what you wrote and... I'd edit what I said if I could. It still reads with racist tones, but...
56.5% isn't quite the majority that you think it is.
There are other places where your beliefs would be better appreciated.
"Because in the U.S. murder is primarily committed by blacks (blacks made up 56.5% of known murder offenders the FBI's 2020 stats)."
That's a terribly misleading stat, since first, the FBI stats are based just on the self reported number of cases by police agencies and departments, and they are based on police reporting of cases, not based on actual convictions for the crime. So any type of police bias in terms of who they target as suspect will be included.
An interesting part is that not just in 2020, but year after year the "unknown" cases are almost exactly the same number as those where the suspect is believed to be white. Is that just a statistical anomaly, or is it because there could be some bias in the reporting?
Like say departments being more likely to hold off on attributing blame in their reporting unless absolutely certain depending on the race of the potential suspect? Who knows, but either way, there is way too much uncertainty to make the statement you made.
"In the seven months after George Floyd's death (June - December 2020)"
More biased poppycock. The increase in black fatalities started in March, months before Floyd was killed. Also, nationwide the raise in fatalities occurred almost equally in both urban and rural areas. The main causes attributed to this rise in fatalities across the board has nothing to do with the police backing off from pulling blacks, but with the roads being less crowded due to the pandemic, which caused people to drive more recklessly, with increases in behaviors like speeding, DUI, not wearing seatbelts, not wearing a helmet for motorcycle riders, etc.
A higher percentage of murder cases in white neighborhoods are cleared than in black neighborhoods. One reason is because a high percentage of white-on-white murders are domestics where it's easy to determine the killer (e.g., he's the dead husband holding the gun to his own cratered head). Another reason is because white neighborhoods have less of a "snitches get stitches" culture.
Thus, it's very likely that the 56.5% black figure understates the black share of total murder offenders.
"The increase in black [traffic] fatalities started in March, months before Floyd was killed."
The total number of black traffic fatalities in March through May 2020 was flat compared to the same months in 2019. (Deaths per mile driven were up, but miles driven were down, so overall there was no difference.)
Then, following George Floyd's death on May 25, 2020, black overall road deaths exploded, being an incredible 55% higher in June 2020 than in June 2019. Check out the graph:
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-racial-reckoning-on-the-roads/
I don't believe the NHTSA had reported road deaths by race before the last couple of years, so these trends are not well covered. But that's what I'm here fore.
Like I said on my previous comment where you linked to this garbage, stop reading white supremacist crap and look at the actual source of the data, not at the figure made by bigots specifically for the purpose of scaring idiots like yourself and convince you how absolutely horrible black folks are.
Here is the actual data again:
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813118
At no point in the year did road fatalities among blacks increased to 55% from 2019 to 2020. The increase (19%) began in March, and peaked at 21% in Nov.
Sorry, you are misinterpreting Table 2. See above for the calculations.
Big "there is a welfare queen* in Chicago who has filed 32 applications for government handouts under 19 names using variations on herself from her six marriages" energy.
*While Reagan's implication, much as yours, is that the societal malefactor was Black, when Salon (or Slate) reviewed the record to try to find out from where the Welfare Queen myth grew, they found a woman who was either Indigenous, Italian, or Puerto Rican. Not a whiff of negritude about her.
“illegal handguns”
Don’t worry. Red states and SCOTUS are busy working to make all gun ownership legal, even presumably for black people. You do realize that the 2nd Amendment allegedly applies to all people, even blacks? And 34 states don’t require permits to open carry, right? And a large plurality (20) of states now are getting rid of permits for concealed carry?
https://www.statista.com/chart/20047/gun-carry-laws-in-us-states/
So what exactly are “illegal handguns” in the context of your racist diatribe calling for more policing of black people because otherwise they’ll run amok and murder us all?
"So what exactly are “illegal handguns”"
They are handguns that the persons carrying them are not legally entitled to carry.
Handguns comprise 92% of the guns used in murders. A very large fraction of murder weapons are not legally carried.
Gun control works, especially when it focuses on keeping illegal handguns off the street.
“So when a racial reckoning is declared, cops back off enforcement against black lowlifes“
Assuming you’re correct in your racism - that whenever we ask the police to treat everyone equally, they refuse to do their jobs even as they are alone in realizing that black people are the source of most evil - this still doesn’t really speak well of the police. “If you question our methods at all, or don’t give us free reign to do whatever we want to whomever we want, we’re going to sulk and refuse to do our jobs.” In most professions, that would be grounds for mass firing. But for the police, apparently it’s supposed to inspire more respect and/or prompt us to give in to their extortion. “We’re less evil than the black people, so let us do whatever it takes to suppress them for you, our white friends” certainly makes me feel safer.
It's almost as if most cops aren't heroic Bruce Wayne-like courageous lone crime fighters, but are instead unionized civil servants who won't risk their pensions if the political tides have turned against them. Thus, when the politicians and media suddenly decide that every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints, the cops tend to retreat to the donut shop during their shifts.
When people notice that the cops are cowed and now around much, they start carrying their illegal handguns more often and drive badly.
This doesn’t seem even remotely correct. The most recent statistics I can find show overall that for homicide the offender race is 39% Black or African American, White is 28% and Unknown is 31%.
https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/shr
I cannot find the data you cite about post-Floyd things in the FBI’s Crime Data explorer or elsewhere. That's particularly the case with traffic fatalities and your claim that police were hesitant in stopping African Americans. These are significant pieces of data and without them it's impossible to engage in debate about their meaning.
Can you please either show your data or retract your claims?
Steve Sailer has been a racist troll for a long time. Haven’t seen him post for a very long time in these parts but apparently he’s just been hibernating or perhaps posting elsewhere. Kevin seems to have a high toleration for racist troll comments so I expect we will see more of this type of thing.
What, is VDARE shut down? what the fuck is Sailer doing over here? I was actually looking forward to reading some interesting commentary on a serious problem (that sadly affects communities of color more than any others) then this fucking racist, anti-Catholic troll shows up. Do not feed!
VDARE is on a general strike following the miscarriage of justice in the Charlottesville trial of Rick Spencer & his fellow droogs.
As I said, "blacks made up 56.5% of known murder offenders the FBI's 2020 stats."
That's likely an understatement of the black percentage of total murder offenders, known and unknown, because the police clearance rates tend to be lower in black neighborhoods than in other neighborhoods. See L.A. Times' homicide reporter Jill Leovy's 2015 book "Ghettoside" on how the culture of "snitches get stitches" makes it harder to close murder cases in South L.A. She estimated about a dozen murder witnesses were murdered annually in the LAPD's southern division during the first decade of this century.
"39% Black or African American, White is 28% and Unknown is 31%."
By the way, in FBI statistics, "White" includes both whites and 93% of Hispanics. Some police departments still use the racial categories of the "Adam-12" era when almost all Latinos were lumped into "Caucasians." And the FBI won't break out Asians from American Indians and Pacific Islanders, lumping them all in "Other." So I just look at black vs. nonblack.
Blacks were "known murder offenders" in 2020 at over 8 times the rate per capita of nonblacks. Many people haven't been informed of that fact, even though it's essential to having an intelligent opinion on current criminal justice controversies.
"39% Black or African American, White is 28% and Unknown is 31%."
In other words, blacks make up 39% of the 69% of the 2020 murder cases that have, as of September 2021, been cleared and for which the race of the murder offender(s) has been reported to the FBI. In 31% of 2020 murder cases, no murderer has yet been arrested or been recorded to have died.
39% / 69% = 56.5%, just like I said.
It would be extremely prudent for Democrats to have some data guys on staff who are well-versed in the murder statistics.
After all, the boom in murders in the last two years of the Obama Administration following Ferguson (murders were 22.9% higher in 2016 than in 2014) helped get Trump elected in 2016. But few Democrats seemed to be aware of that because they went all in on the racial reckoning after George Floyd's death and seemed genuinely surprised when reviving Black Lives Matter led once again to more murders (up a record 29.4% in 2020 over 2019).
Of course, it would be extremely imprudent in career terms for a Democratic staffer to take on the job of being the party's MurderBall expert. That's because a jealous rival could have the poor nerd cancelled for knowing the basics about murder in the US, such as that 56.5% of known murder offenders in 2020 (plus a no doubt higher percentage of unknown murder offenders due to snitches getting stitches) were black.
You can't understand murder trends without knowing about the hugely disproportionate black tendency toward murder.
But because I admire Kevin and I support the two party system and thus don't want the Democrats to lose due to easily rectifiable ignorance about the basics of keeping public order (of which being intelligently anti-murder is the most basic of all basics), I shall attempt to clue you in in the comments.
Steve Sailor, Cliff Notes edition: Black people are a crime waiting to happen. For reference, please see the study conducted by McMichael, McMichael, and Bryan et. al.
Differential crime rates by race are well documented. But the same applies to other crimes. Why would your theory only apply to murder?
Due to social distancing and the racial reckoning, cops have been doing less of their more optional work tabulating lesser crimes, while still recording all the murders.
Going back to medieval times, the Anglo-American tradition of justice puts a high importance on the government counting and investigating each murder, less so on lesser crimes.
That doesn't mean the government solves every murder. For example, the NYT today has an article
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/nyregion/nypd-murder-clearance-rate.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=New%20York
about how the murder clearance rate in NYC has fallen from 90% before the Events of 2020 to 62%. Declining clearance rates were a pretty general trend nationwide last year, which suggests the black share of unknown murder offenders (which is almost certainly higher than the black share of known murder offenders, according to Jill Leovy and other experts) likely went up even higher in 2020.
Gang warfare. Mostly black. The slowing speed of it tells me it is about over. I wouldn't be surprised if doesn't drop in 2022.
Homicides in two dozen big cities according to Richard Rosenfeld's quarterly report are up 4% in the first 9 months of 2021 over the first 9 months of 2020.
However, homicides were lower from January 1, 2020 to May 24, 2020 than during the "racial reckoning" from George Floyd's death until the end of the year. In terms of murderousness, we are still in the racial reckoning in 2021, but it's not worse than the last 7 months of 2020. We've plateaued at a new normal of about 50 gun murders per day, up from about 35 per day during the era in between the two periods when Black Lives Matter was heavily promoted by the Establishment (from Ferguson in August 2014 up through the Dallas BLM Massacre 23 months later, and then from May 25, 2020 to who knows when).
"... Only the murder rate has. .."
I really doubt it is only murder, it is just that murder is the only subcategory for which we have stats. Attempted murder is almost surely up to and probably other of the more serious violent crimes like carjacking.
Yeah, but those have declined in 2021
Yes, of the crimes that make up "violent crimes", homicide and aggravated assault went up, while rape and robbery went down.
I don't see why that would be the case. It's true that the FBI's numbers are compiled by reports from local police agencies who are a small minority of the total police agencies and who do not themselves have uniform classifications of crimes. This is a long-standing criticism, as those who frequented the late Mark Kleiman's blog will undoubtedly remember.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that there's no reason why the reporting agencies would carefully report homicides but fail to include other extremely serious crimes like attempted murder or car-jacking. These would be serious crimes that would certainly be reported by victims and investigated (with reports generated) in the same way as would be homicides.
Therefore, in the universe of FBI crime reporting, the one should be as accurate as the other. So it's unlikely that these other categories of serious crime have increased but are being incorrectly reported by the FBI.
Murders are counted pretty carefully because a dead body with a hole in it or a hole with a dead body in it demands bureaucratic attention. Car thefts are counted pretty carefully by the cops because you need a police report to go to you car insurance company.
Other kind of crimes are pretty erratically reported over time and space. Thus, I pay most attention to statistics for the Big Sleep.
So uh... what happened to the wonderings about domestic violence killings during lockdowns? I don't think I'd expect it to result in such a big divergence from the rate, but I would expect it to be responsible for some...
This NYT article seems to bear that out a little bit: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/us/fbi-murders-2020-cities.html. Using the numbers for men and women, it looks like the number of women killed as a proportion of all homicide victims may have gone up in 2020.
But it doesn't seem to be the only factor. Increased gun purchases, some spree killings (I think one of those in Des Moines was an intra-family massacre-suicide? Can't remember if that was 2019 or 2020...), and some increased gang violence as well.
All the speculation about how domestic murders were going to increase during the pandemic due to locked down people getting on their loved ones' nerves was pretty reasonable. But it mostly didn't happen. Domestic gun murders increased 4% in 2020 over 2019, but that pales compared to the national overall increase in all types of murder of 29.4%.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/domestic-gun-murders-up-4-in-2020/
The important point is that the pandemic had surprisingly little impact, pro or con, on the murder rate. The murder rate during the first ten weeks (March 17 to May 24, 2020) was up some over 2019, but in line with trends: for reasons I've never seen explained, gun murders, which had been drifting down since 2016 started to slowly rise in mid-2019).
Instead, the biggest driver of the historic surge in murders was the racial reckoning that began with George Floyd's death on May 25, 2020.
Your sources are shit.
The elephant in the room is the increased amount of automatic firearms in households, which can be reached during an intense argument.
I think it makes sense that the impulse to commit crime is dropping overall, but the impulses are easier to act upon due to how easy it has become to grab a lethal weapon.
I would be interested in comparing gun accident rates with murder rates as well.
My impression is that the biggest driver of the huge increase in murders in 2020 was not at home but during parties after the Establishment decided that lockdowns and social distancing didn't apply to those mourning George Floyd's death.
For example, Chicago set its all time record for murders in one weekend in late May 2020, a few days after George Floyd's death. It took NYC lowlifes longer to realize the fearsome NYPD was cowed, but shootings exploded in NYC on the third weekend after Floyd's death.
Here are graphs of shootings week-by-week in 2020 for Chicago and New York:
https://www.takimag.com/article/slaughter-in-the-cities/
Presumably the violent crime number is excluding the murder number, but does it always?
The two lines cross in 2015, so maybe that's where to look for the answer. What was happening that year, that's only kept on getting worse ever since?
2015?
That's when Mexico raised its export quota for rapists & murderers, in fulfillment of El Jefe Maximo's scripture.
The two lines in Kevin's graph, one for homicide one for general violent crime, are set so that 1990 is 100%. The early 1990s were exceptionally homicidal for reasons seen in "The Wire:" the Crack Wars.
The Crack Wars rapidly diminished after about 1995, so the murder rate fell faster than the general violence rate, which tends to be driven by run-of-the-mill events like bar fights and domestic violence that are less influenced by volatile trends like the rise and fall of drug wars.
Then, the first Black Lives Matter era began at Ferguson in August 2014, and continued for the last two years of the Obama Administration. You can see the Ferguson Effect drive up murder rates in cities where BLM won big victories over the cops, such as in Baltimore, where the murder rate exploded after the Freddie Gray riot of April 25, 2015, and in Chicago where the video of the cop murdering Laquan MacDonald was finally released on November 23, 2015.
Overall, the number of murders was 22.9% higher in 2016 than in 2014, the biggest two year increase up to that point since the feds started keeping careful track around 1960.
But then the massacres of cops in Dallas and Baton Rouge in July 2016 helped elect Trump that November and the media and big donors like George Soros backed off on promoting BLM until May 2020 (first Arbery, then Floyd). The Floyd Effect was much more national than the more localized Ferguson Effect and murders overall in 2020 were up 29.4% over 2019, more than double the previous worst year since 1960 (1968).
I hope someone smart is digging into the cross-tabs on this, if they exist. Because I'm wondering if it's not just the rate, but the shape of murder that's changed in the pandemic, which I ultimately believe is the underlying reason for all the dislocation and de-socialization it's caused.
Comments above suggest a shape shift - lots of new guns and gun owners, more women being murdered. And are geographic and/or demographic anomalies playing a role? I'd very much like to read that analysis.
I live in Fairfax County, VA -our murder rate is way up and it's entirely due to a spike in domestic incidents so in the 'burbs that is true.
Mass Shootings, with 4 or more wounded and/or killed, were way up in 2020 over 2019, especially after the Racial Reckoning began on 5/25/20. In June through August, according to Gun Violence Archive, the number of mass-shooting incidents was 72 percent higher in 2020 than in 2019.
https://www.takimag.com/article/black-lives-murdered/
A huge fraction of mass shootings are at black social events. Some are premeditated gang drive-bys, but as Jill Leovy pointed out in her book "Ghettoside," many are just knuckleheaded spur-of-the-moment beefs over disses.
When the cops retreated to the donut shop after George Floyd's death, criminals started feeling more secure about carrying their illegal handguns. This raises the likelihood of a run-of-the-mill argument turning into one of those headlines like "One Dead, Five Wounded at South Side Block Party."
Sailer's Law of Mass Shootings says that when there are more wounded than dead, the shooter is likely black. When there are more dead than wounded, the shooter is likely white or other nonblack.
I'll leave that to the reader to work out why that is so often true.
The general shape of murders in 2020 was pretty similar to the general shape in 2019 -- blacks shooting blacks more than anything else -- only more so.
The Floyd Effect had the same impact as the Ferguson Effect, just more nationally.
Most murders in the US derive from the drug trade or domestic abuse. If murder is changing, it is because these underlying causes are changing.
Actuaries can predict your chances of being murdered pretty well if you:
1) Are involved in the drug trade
2) Live with someone who is involved with the drug trade
3) Live with an abusive partner
4) Have recently left an abusive relationship
It has been awhile since I dove into this, but I believe 1-4 capture close to 60-70% of all murders in the US.
Yes, you need to analyze the actual statistics on where the crimes are committed and who is doing it. Also exactly when it has happened - a number of people are getting the timing wrong relative to the protests. You won't get the answer just looking at overall numbers and which party controls the White House or Congress.
"Most murders in the US derive from the drug trade or domestic abuse"
Not according to the statistics
The number one motive for murders (when the motive is known) is arguments between people where the argument is not related to drugs, gangs, burglaries, or money, which tells that drug trade is not a big factor (its about 1/10 of the murders from arguments that turn deadly).
If domestic abuse is also not the main motive, since the majority of the murders it is unknown what relationship if any existed between the victim and the murderer.
From these two things what seems pretty clear is that the main reason for murder in the USA is that there are way too many hot heads carrying handguns (the No 1 method of murder by far) these days, so arguments that in the past may have ended with someone throwing a punch, now end up with someone shooting at the other person.
"in incidents of murder for which the relationships of murder victims and offenders were known, 54.3 percent were killed by someone they knew" - FBI
"Among violent crimes, robbery was most likely and homicide was least likely to be committed by a stranger." - Office of Justice Programs (ojp.gov)
And then there's this page: https://www.statista.com/statistics/195327/murder-in-the-us-by-relationship-of-victim-to-offender/
"In 2020, far more people were killed by people they knew than by strangers."
Illegally carried handguns are a massive problem. A large fraction of murders aren't carried out for Michael Corleone-level organized crime strategies, but because some minor participant in the drug trade had easy access to a gun, especially an illegally carried handgun, at the moment he feels angry toward somebody. Jill Leovy, the former L.A. Times homicide reporter sums up:
"The smallest ghettoside spat seemed to escalate to violence, as if absent law, people were left with no other means of bringing a dispute to a close. Debts and competition over goods and women - especially women -- drove many killings. But insults, snitching, drunken antics, and the classic "unwanted party guests" also were common homicide motives. Small conflicts divided people into hostile camps and triggered lasting feuds. Every grudge seemed to harbor explosive potential. It would ignite when antagonists met by chance, gunfire erupting in streets or liquor stores."
That's why murders went down so much in 21st Century New York City when the NYPD cracked down hard on illegally carried handguns: gun control changed the culture so that criminals stopped packing heat. Mass shootings at parties went way down in NYC until they returned in June 2020 due to the NYPD retreating during the racial reckoning.
Solar writes "the main reason for murder in the USA is that there are way too many hot heads carrying handguns"
Right, that's well said.
In the FBI 2020 stats, handguns accounted for 92% of gun murders for which the type of gun, rifles for 5%, and shotguns for 3%.
The good news is that hot heads with handguns tend to already have criminals records, so in most states it's illegal for most of them to be packing heat.
New York City showed how far down murder could be driven if the cops are instructed to enforce gun control laws on the street. The NYPD managed to change the culture to one in which criminals leave their handguns at home 99% of the time rather than risk being caught carrying and sent to prison. Some murders are carefully planned professional hits, but a lot are just the result of impulsive knuckleheadedness among guys who happen to have guns on them at the time they got into an argument.
On the other hand, stop-and-frisk probably got out of control under Mayor Bloomberg in the incredible numbers of blacks and Hispanics stopped.
Di Blasio's first term may have been close to the ideal due to the very liberal mayor having appointed as his police supremo Giuliani's old appointee Bill Bratton, who has a long successful record of pushing down crime while placating the media simultaneously. When Di Blasio got worked up in the wake of Ferguson over the loosies guy's death in 2014, Bratton left the mayor hung out to dry, so NYC didn't suffer a Ferguson Effect.
Why? Hey, let’s ask one of the murderers why they did it.
“Though friends with Justin Atkinson, Torres allegedly told deputies he shot the man because he believed Atkinson had stolen from him. He then went to Atkinson’s apartment, shooting and killing his teen son and Mull because “Kevin believed Anthony was going to be angry because he had killed Justin,” the sheriff said. “We don’t deal with triple homicides all the time” in Osceola County, López said. The Sheriff’s Office has not released any records pertaining to Torres’ arrest.”
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/crime/os-ne-kevin-torres-osceola-murder-charges-20211117-g3wdh7356re4zpw5bbfjmvfj4e-story.html
So there you go. He was mad. And he had a gun. So why not kill 3 people?
“Detectives believe that a dispute started between some Battle Creek and Kalamazoo teenagers at a football game between Battle Creek Central and Kalamazoo Central high schools in Kalamazoo on Oct. 8. Rabbitt said the dispute continued on Nov. 13 when teens from Battle Creek were at a park in Kalamazoo and sent a picture of a gun over social media and some Kalamazoo teens then arrived at the park and fired some shots.”
“On Nov. 14 Williams and some others were playing basketball at Full Blast and they were followed home by young men in two cars and shots were fired, including one that killed Williams.”
https://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/story/news/2021/11/22/three-custody-fatal-battle-creek-shooting/8719828002/
So there you go. They were mad. And they had guns. So why not kill them?
I could go on all day with this. It’s not politics. It’s not the pandemic. It’s not the economy. It’s not even the lack of completely useless police.
You can't explain a variable with a constant. Americans have always had a lot of guns, and people have always gotten mad.
It's not a constant, gun ownership has increased recently, while at the same time gun laws have become more lax in many States. Add to it the increase in anxiety and other mental conditions as the result of a world pandemic and mostly toxic media, and you have the perfect ingredients for an increase in murders.
I haven't checked the most recent stats, but it used to be the case that the majority of murders committed in the US were not actually crime related(they were not related to other criminal activity), but the result of arguments gone bad with someone pulling a gun to end it.
This! We are hamstrung by Heller v. DC and a refusal of the guns industry to self regulate. We have more murders because what used to be a neighborhood argument over something stupid now becomes a murder. Also guns in the hands of abusive spouses.
The statistics I have seen show gun ownership in America as pretty constant over the past 50 years or so. I guess it's possible that the pandemic made people less psychologically stable. I don't know how one would measure that.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/14/us/us-gun-sales-record/index.html
"Industry data and firearms background checks show nearly 23 million guns were purchased in 2020, according to Small Arms Analytics, a consulting firm based in Greenville, South Carolina.
That's a 65% increase compared with 2019, when 13.9 million guns were sold, according to Small Arms Analytics."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00175-z
"More than 42% of people surveyed by the US Census Bureau in December reported symptoms of anxiety or depression in December, an increase from 11% the previous year."
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm
"During June 24–30, 2020, U.S. adults reported considerably elevated adverse mental health conditions associated with COVID-19. Younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers reported having experienced disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, increased substance use, and elevated suicidal ideation."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/04/mental-health-coronavirus/
"Nearly half of Americans report the coronavirus crisis is harming their mental health, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. A federal emergency hotline for people in emotional distress registered a more than 1,000 percent increase in April compared with the same time last year. Last month, roughly 20,000 people texted that hotline, run by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Online therapy company Talkspace reported a 65 percent jump in clients since mid-February. Text messages and transcribed therapy sessions collected anonymously by the company show coronavirus-related anxiety dominating patients’ concerns."
So you all you have many more guns in circulation, many more people already on the edge mentally, combined with increases in alcohol and substance use. Add to it the myriad laws across the US that have made it easier to carry guns in public, and it would be surprising if murders didn't go up.
It's a perfect storm of conditions that makes it that much likely for people to get into arguments with each other, and for those arguments to end with one person shooting the other given the stupidly easy availability and accessibility of guns. Hence why the stats are what they are.
Seems that the commenting system doesn't like it when I include multiple links so here it is again with out them:
From report on CNN:
"Industry data and firearms background checks show nearly 23 million guns were purchased in 2020, according to Small Arms Analytics, a consulting firm based in Greenville, South Carolina.
That's a 65% increase compared with 2019, when 13.9 million guns were sold, according to Small Arms Analytics."
From article in Nature:
"More than 42% of people surveyed by the US Census Bureau in December reported symptoms of anxiety or depression in December, an increase from 11% the previous year."
From CDC study:
"During June 24–30, 2020, U.S. adults reported considerably elevated adverse mental health conditions associated with COVID-19. Younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers reported having experienced disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, increased substance use, and elevated suicidal ideation."
From Washington Post article:
"Nearly half of Americans report the coronavirus crisis is harming their mental health, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. A federal emergency hotline for people in emotional distress registered a more than 1,000 percent increase in April compared with the same time last year. Last month, roughly 20,000 people texted that hotline, run by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Online therapy company Talkspace reported a 65 percent jump in clients since mid-February. Text messages and transcribed therapy sessions collected anonymously by the company show coronavirus-related anxiety dominating patients’ concerns."
So you to summarize, you have many more guns in circulation, many more people on the edge mentally, combined with increases in alcohol and substance use. Add to it the new and expanding myriad laws across the US that have made it easier to carry guns in public, and it would be surprising if murders didn't go up.
It's a perfect storm of conditions that makes it that much likely for people to get into arguments with each other, and for those arguments to end with one person shooting the other given the extremely easy availability and accessibility of guns. Hence why the stats are what they are.
Fewer people overall are gun owners than 50 years ago, but those people own more guns than ever before -- an average of six firearms now, iirc. That's just legal guns. What those statistics don't capture is the huge trade in illegal and untraceable firearms that flood into cities from states where there are virtually no regulations on purchasing guns.
"mostly toxic media"
In particular, the media spending the last seven months of 2020 telling blacks that they deserve a racial reckoning and implying that they should be allowed to resist arrest if they aren't in the mood to be arrested.
This appears to have helped stoke a big increase in black-on-black murders. For example, according to the California attorney general's stats, the number of black murder victims was up 40% in 2020 over 2019 while the number of white murder victims was up only 9%.
In California, blacks were 10.5 times as likely as whites to be homicide victims, Hispanics 2.6 times, and Other (mostly Asians) 0.9 times as likely.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/homicides-up-31-in-california-in-2020/
In contrast to murder victims, murder offender statistics were not reported by the state of California, but the racial ratios are likely to be fairly similar.
If there is a single most important statistic to help you understand today's fraught criminal justice controversies that you should try to keep in mind, it's that the murder rate among blacks is roughly an order of magnitude worse than among whites. If you can remember to think about that number, it will help you wield Occam's Razor. Most people don't, so they wind up waving around Occam's Butterknife.
You want there to be some sociological explanation. I don’t think there is one. A guy has a dispute with a “friend” over money. So he kills him… and then kills two more. Cain killed Abel.
The killer is nuts. He’s got no moral center. He can’t tell right from wrong. He was treated poorly as a child so he lacks empathy. He’s a sociopath. And now he has a gun. So he killed them. I don’t think it’s that complicated. There are lots of crazy people in this world. Today, there are more than ever before. And they have guns.
We've always had sociopaths among us. That's not the question Justin - why now are there more murders?
They have guns now. And they don’t care if they get caught. Do you really think there is some rational explanation? They are armed sociopaths.
Well Justin that is my point, there are more guns washing about in society so the sociopaths are more deadly then they were.
How about this, then…
After the murder of George Floyd and the violence which followed, some small group of armed people decided they si play had no interest in civil society. So now they are waging war on each other and the rest.
Personally I don’t think there is an actual agenda, but maybe it triggered a break among some.
“ COLORADO SPRINGS — Shootings involving children and teenagers have been on the rise in recent years, and 2021 is no exception, according to the Child's Defense Fund. The agency says gun violence is now the leading cause of death for all children and teens ages 1-19. In 2019, 3,371 children and teens died from guns—enough to fill 168 classrooms of 20 children.
Experts say a lack of structured activity caused by the pandemic, coupled with easy access to guns, are major contributing factors.”
“ PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – More than two dozen teenagers have lost their lives to gun violence in Allegheny County this year. The reason? More and more young people are getting their hands on guns.”
Take your pick.
The media figured that George Floyd 24x7 would help get rid of Trump. In the end, after all the ensuing riots and murders, the racial reckoning almost cost Biden the election and now looks like it may cost the Democrats the House in 2022.
If a few Democratic nerds followed murder statistics the ways they follow baseball statistics, there would have been somebody to point out to the Democrats and their media allies that the first BLM Era helped get Trump elected. But Democrat number nerds fear being aware of murder stats because they are so dominated by blacks. Unfortunately, ignorance isn't a good political strategy because you keep making unforced errors, like encouraging the mayhem of 2020.
"Americans have always had a lot of guns, and people have always gotten mad."
It's almost as if things changed in America on May 25, 2020 ...
If not any of these things then why were murder rates on the decline before March 2020?
I mean if you put two and two together, what it basically says is people are angrier, more prone to violence, more upset largely due to the dislocations on upheaval from the pandemic and they more access to firearms. Do the math.
Murder rates doubled in the 1960s-70s due to the rise of liberalism at a time of increasing numbers of young people, peaking with the cocaine year of 1980. Then murder rates fell, especially among blacks, during Reagan's first term. But then crack cocaine came along in the late 1980s, accompanied by the gangsta rap that celebrated the crack dealer's ethos, and murder rates were very high in the early 1990s.
Then murder rates fell much of the time until Ferguson in later 2014. The Trump administration wrestled the rates down somewhat, but they started going up again in late 2019, and exploded after George Floyd's death. And here we are in a new normal.
According to the FBI, handguns account for 92% of murders with a known type of firearm. Of course, Democrats are most focused on gun control of legal rifles, even though they are used in 3-5% of gun murders.
The most effective kind of gun control, as proven in NYC over the last 30 years, is cracking down on illegal concealed carry: Grosskreutz rather than Rittenhouse.
I like how at EVEN THE LIBERAL SULZBERGER ADVERTISER the left & liberals must grapple with the pronounced rise in murder in a serious way while the GQP, whose 2A Cult helps burnish the reputation of & exalts in the power of the gun, is a nonfactor.
Anyway, as someone on this very blog articulated last year, is there a divergence of the murder & attempted murder rates? Is the fact ER are now serving as almost uniquely Rona triage the reason that gravely wounded people in shootings are now dying (being murdered) while than being maimed (merely having an attempt at murder made on them)?
*rather than, NOT while than
That's a good point. A reduction in the effectiveness of ER gun wound treatment (and emergency medical services in general) would both A) increase the number of homicides and B) reduce the number of gun assaults (because what would've been "B" in a pre-covid year gets converted into "A"). I think it's pretty plausible this factor plus an increase in domestic violence plus the "idle young men" effect of lockdowns (ie, a lot of males in the "greatest propensity to commit crime" age cohort who would otherwise have been occupied with work or school were idle) explains the spike in murders.
I wouldn't be surprised if the extra cash sloshing around a lot of people's pockets translated into a spike in drug sales, too, with an attendant increase in associated criminal violence.
In New York City, shooting incidents were up 100% in 2020 over 2019, but murders were up only 40%. That appears to be a general trend nationally: there was huge increase in shootings and a very large increase increase in murders due to shooters being less accurate in 2020 than in 2019: e.g., 2020 saw more mass shootings at black social events, which usually have a low death to wounding ratio.
That suggests that emergency rooms did a good job. Of course, the big surge in shootings was not during the worst of the NYC pandemic in March-May 2020, but after the racial reckoning got going in the summer.
Wouldn't a lot of this simply be the result of pandemic-related closures?
A lot of violent crimes that get reported involve strangers in public - bar fights, stranger rapes, muggings, etc. When lots of people are home, there is less opportunity. Domestic violence becomes even harder to report, because shelter space is less available.
Murder is usually pretty concentrated among people with ties to gangs and drugs. Those things didn't go away with the pandemic. It may have become easier for them - fewer potential witnesses out and about, even more handguns available.
Sometimes crime seems like an infectious disease or fashion trend. Once a particular crime starts happening, others jump on the bandwagon. We may simply be suffering from a period where shooting at others is the requisite behavior of anyone who wants to look like a "tough guy." In my area there is a high school where it has become fashionable to outrun the police, so kids carjack a car and drive around until spotted by cops. Then they speed off, knowing that the car chase protocols used by police limit the likelihood they will be pursued. It's like the TikTok challenge of stealing soap dispensers from school, but deadlier.
Lockdowns and the move to work from home in a highly armed society are going to increase homicides. American propinquity leads to interpersonal conflict. Close proximity to others combined with the continuous public broadcasting Americans have the right to own guns and also the right to use them for self-defense as well as protection of property rights has led to a higher homicide rate. Americans not only believe they have a right to be armed but to use their lethal weapons to kill if threatened or aggrieved. Like cops.
"Lockdowns and the move to work from home in a highly armed society are going to increase homicides."
That sounds reasonable, but instead the big explosion in murders in 2020 happened after society announced in late May that social distancing didn't apply to blacks worked up over George Floyd's death. Thus there was a big increase in shootings at black parties, such as the 22 shot at a block party in Washington DC in August 2020.
Besides the other tings mentioned in the comments by non-racist trolls I’d also like to point out that there has been a significant rise in firepower over the last few years. When I was young most people seemed to be satisfied with a revolver. Nowadays almost everyone has a modern pistol like a Glock which has a magazine with 15-30 rounds. Pistols generally have triggers that are easier to pull too. Lots of bullets flying might also account for more “innocent bystanders” being killed by stray shots.
The number of shell casings the cops pick up as evidence after a mass shooting at a black party is extraordinary.
Apropos of nothing, New Mexico Republicans are up in arms (heh!) that the (need I say "Democratic"?) legislature has banned the carrying of guns in the Roundhouse*, our state Capitol. They say it's because legislators want to evade "accountability."
*(Yes, it's round ... that makes it harder for you to corner your legislator. -- rimshot!)
It is easy for them to talk about 2nd amendment accountability since they are the only ones crazy enough, scary enough and evil enough to terrorize people.
The real solution to this is to reanimate the Black Panthers. I guarantee the Republicans will repeal the entire second amendment in a heartbeat. In the interim we could use the Black Panthers to get rid of the insane open carry laws. There’s historical precedent for this.
https://sites.law.duke.edu/secondthoughts/2020/04/08/the-black-panthers-nra-ronald-reagan-armed-extremists-and-the-second-amendment/
While I do think you are one to something, alas I bet the GOP would find away to regulate guns in such a way that only blacks are affected.
Still no open carry in California. The Panthers scared the pants off St. Ronnie and his fellow gun nut posers.
I think you're right. Or at least more persons of color and even liberals carrying guns and using them might very well change the gun right debate. It so easy to say people want to take your guns. It's not quite so easy when people you don't like have them too.
Susan Angell did nothing wrong!
2nd Amendment solutions are the only way to keep our legislative bodies in check.
Aren't all violent crimes potentially murderous? The divergence in the two rates could just be a stiffening of the intent to commit violence that reflects the increased stresses of living through a pandemic in starkly distrustful/fearful socio-political times.
I'm curious: are all violent crimes down (other than homicide)? Or there varying trends among assault, rape, and armed robbery (the major violent offenses). Knowing that might elucidate the situation.
Rape and robbery are down, homicides and aggravated assault are up (and both started going up in 2015).
Rape may be down, because it's difficult to rape while social distancing.
If I recall correctly, 1931 was a high point in per capita homicides in the US. Economic/ Social stress can lead to more homicide. That stress has to go somewhere.
I was talking about this with friends when the lockdowns began in March 2020. I felt that there would be a lot of anger with no safe outlet. Could be a contributing factor.
The high murder rate in 1931 was due to Prohibition. The murder rate fell sharply during the 1930s after Prohibition was lifted, even though the economy was in very bad shape until about 1940.
Similarly, the murder rate fell impressively during the hard times after 2008, bottoming out in 2014, at which point The Establishment decided that criminals weren't the pressing problem anymore, but that crime had diminished so much that the police were the big problem that must be dealt with. Thus, murders are up about 40-45% since Ferguson.
The high murder rate of 2020 and 2021 is likely due in part to sending out stimulus checks, which stimulated high spirits. Note the big simultaneous increase in traffic deaths, especially among blacks during the Racial Reckoning.
Before drawing conclusions about the homicides, I'd like to see them sorted into categories like spousal/partner/domestic, incident to a robbery, gang, bar fight, etc.
It is very disturbing, though.
Kevin's point here is the divergence between murder rates and other violent crimes , not that murder went up itself. Most of the discussion here seems to be arguing about why murder itself increased alone with explanations why that would also apply to other violent crimes and so do not address the issue.
One factor not mentioned yet I think is that the rates kevin is citing are for REPORTED crimes . And recent events have clearly reduced the reporting rate for almost all types of crimes. When people feel police are too busy to do anything ( due to having to deal with protests ) or too reluctant to do anything due to fears if being accused of being racist , or feel left wing prosecutors will let the criminals go anyway, they may not bother reporting a crime. Do not argue the above is nor true as this is what many conservatives feel ( whether or not you think it is true ). And, on the other side, if you are thinking police are racist, or do not want to be seen as willing to deal with police in your community, or think issues should be handled without police if possible, you are also going to be more reluctant to report a crime.
And covid fear itself may play a factor if trying to isolate and do not want interactions with people, including police.
But the decline in reporting will be more pronounced the more minor the crime is .
If your son is murdered, very unlikely any of the above factors will cause you to decide not to report. But , if you were mildly assaulted with no real injury , more likely to just let it go and not report now.
So I suspect other violent crime really is up more significantly, just offset by decline in reporting rates . Maybe not enough to erase the gap with murder, but a lot of it.
Gangs. I grew up where there were big gangs and lots of murders.
That doesn't mean it isn't political. It's very political but just a form that gets less attention than identity politics.
I think it's related to deindustrialization and the rise of crap jobs in poorer neighborhoods. These young men would do something else but the jobs left.
I expected it was due to the pandemic, and so should be the case also in other countries, but apparently the opposite is true. The UN reports that lockdowns led to decreases in homicide rates, but only while they lasted. Otherwise, some countries saw a 25% decrease in homicides and others little to none.
So not to give an explanation for the US data, but to say the pandemic is probably not it.
When I checked in January 2021, the estimate for Canada was that murders in 2020 were likely up 3-5% over 2019. I believe Mexico was similar.
The main reason murders were up so much more in the US than in most other countries wasn't covid, it was the George Floyd racial reckoning.
It's a lot easier to own guns in the U.S. than abroad.
A lot of interesting speculation. Perhaps someone should do a study?
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/04/news-funding-gun-research
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-patrick-sharkey.html
What causes violence? The mere presence of a gun. Last night…
“Two New York City police officers responding to a report of a man with a gun were shot in the Bronx during a gun battle with the suspect seconds after they approached him on a building stoop on Wednesday night, according to the police.”
None died but still. It’s all the same thing. Some want to blame the “defund” police for all this. Fine. Let’s have more police and then arrest everyone who owns a gun. That will, eventually, stop the violence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/business/california-organized-crime-theft-looting.html
“ Over the course of several hours on Friday night, at least 30 people burglarized several of San Francisco’s most upscale stores, prosecutors said, in what law enforcement officials called one of the most brazen thefts in recent memory.
The following day, hours after officials vowed to prosecute the thieves and prevent another large burglary, dozens of people ran into a Nordstrom store in the suburb of Walnut Creek, Calif., 25 miles to the east. They grabbed clothes, jackets and handbags, and escaped into a caravan of waiting vehicles, the police said.
Across eight days this month, near Chicago, around the Bay Area and in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, a series of fast, high-profile burglaries have alarmed businesses, bystanders and some state and local officials, who have promised to crack down on the crimes.”
While mr. Drum might not consider this part of the crime wave, I think it’s probably related. There is a brazenness to it all now. An “ I don’t give a flip” attitude which is beginning to spread. It might have been triggered by the pandemic and then aggravated by the summer 2020 protests, but there are now a class of people who are ready to loot and pillage the cities.
It’s not a lot of people scattered about about a country of 330 million, but it it’s enough to get noticed. And let’s be honest, it’s mostly black folks who are doing the killing, stealing, and, yes, dying. Oh well.
The increase is a among these brazen black gangs. Good for them, I guess. They’ve got nothing to lose.