Murder Rate

What do the data show?

Our murder rate is very high by global standards. In 2023, 5.7 out of every 100,000 people in the US were murder victims. We rank just ahead of Russia and just behind Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania. However, the murder rate declined by almost 50% between 1990 and 1999 and continued declining for the most part until 2014. The murder rate spiked with the onset of COVID but then returned nearly to its prior level—well below the level of the 1990s.

What might explain these patterns?

Almost all murders are committed with guns. Broad civilian access to guns is unique to the United States. The Constitution’s Second Amendment provides the right to bear arms and, as a result, the country has more guns than people. Because almost all murders are committed with guns, and there are essentially no alternative weapons that are as lethal, this is one viable explanation for our high murder rate.

Cycles of high murder rates are also partly driven by demographics, especially the number of men in the population between the ages of 20 and 34. The decline in the murder rate from 1990 to 1999 coincided with a decline in the percent of the population who are men in that age range. The decline in the crack epidemic in the late 1990s and stricter sentencing and mass incarceration were also likely causes. The increased number of police officers might have been a factor in the 1990s, though the number of officers has subsequently declined to near their prior levels even as the murder rate has remained much lower than the 1990s.