US poised to see record drop in yearly homicides despite public concern over crime

Rapidcreek@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 144 points –
Homicide numbers poised to hit a record decline nationwide. But most Americans think murder is on the rise
abcnews.go.com
22

Everyone is addicted to fear

Well there is a party that uses "crime" as a tool of fear against, immigrants, Democrats, and any country that isn't on their side.

Then there's the other party issuing dire warnings about ghost guns and high capacity magazines and insisting that something must be done

Umm ... something should be done. Unless your cool with killing kids? So far GOP is 110% on board, unless they are inside "kids", then they actually want to do something, because it furthers their agenda of fear/pain. Because those in fear/pain can more easily be controlled and used to further their power until they can go full fascism.

It's pretty literally the only violent crime that is rising at the moment. Are they going about it in a very stupid way that won't work? Sure because they're paid to do so, it's theatre and perks really need to develop the skills to see through such nonsense.

They think that because news media all runs on the adage, "If it bleeds, it leads." 24/7 coverage of every murder in the nation just might make people think murders are on the rise.

Yeah but why does it lead? I think it's because fear, uncertainty, and doubt, play at our most basic instincts for survival, and evoke in us neurochemical responses identical to those of actual fight or flight. The ready availability of anonymous validation on the internet allows us now more than ever as a species to justify our first instincts and act on them, regardless of whether we've evaluated the facts and logic free from emotion and passion.

By compartmenting and outsourcing our social interactions and we attack our own emotional well-being. We leaned into likes, follows, porn and video game addiction, substance abuse, quick hits of dopamine, evocative of neurochemical states we are supposed to get from hugging a loved one, helping someone, finding something shiney, or from a successful hunt. We're wiring our reward centers for instant gratification and losing the ability to be rational. My two cents.

Meanwhile, on ABC News' front page...

Hey, you can tell it's not bad when the bulk of that list is international deaths! Lol

It's murder time again in America. The Johnsons awake and put on a pot of coffee before Mr. Johnson goes to work at the murder factory. Mrs. Johnson drives their 2 kids in their new 2024 Murder vehicle from Ford. The kids favorite class is murder 101 and murder is on the lunch menu today. Vote Reagan in 2025 and Make Murder Great Again.

Yeah, but 'murder in America' is still the top one. There is public concern over crime because the media makes us concerned by making every murder a major story.

To be fair, murder should be a major story. It's a serious crime, and it's probably a life defining story for many people related to the victim (and even those related to the suspect).

"The homicide rate in the United States is expected to plummet nearly 13% compared to 2022, meaning more than 2,000 fewer people were the victims of homicide this year, Jeff Asher, a national crime analyst, told ABC News.

The FBI's annual Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which analyzed data from 15,897 law enforcement agencies, the largest single-year jump in murders in more than a century occurred between 2019 and 2020 as murders and nonnegligent manslaughter offenses nationwide rose nearly 30%.

Homicides across the country continued to increase in 2021 by 4.3% before falling by 6% in 2022, according to the FBI report."The homicide rate in the United States is expected to plummet nearly 13% compared to 2022, meaning more than 2,000 fewer people were the victims of homicide this year, Jeff Asher, a national crime analyst, told ABC News."

So the murder rate is still above 2019 levels. All of those people who are worried about crime must be morons who have fallen for misinformation, clearly.

I'm pretty sure something significant happened late 2019, but I can't quite recall what.

I wonder if the spike in murder rate is connected with domestic abuse. During the pandemic, there was no escape for people who were in danger.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was aiming for. Include financial desperation and mass death due to COVID and you have a powder keg.

Well in that case I guess it's OK that 4 years later the murder rate remains elevated. I keep forgetting that Because The Pandemic is a valid excuse for literally everything.

Nope, it’s a possible explanation for why there was a spike and why that spike is receding.

So the murder rate is still above 2019 levels. All of those people who are worried about crime must be morons who have fallen for misinformation, clearly.

But still under pre-'93 levels. Crime has fallen steadily in the US since '93, and although we have had a pop since iirc 2016, we never reached pre '93 levels during it, and now that pop seems to be slowing down.