Homicides Way Down
Isn't this what we expected?
There are a lot of cheering headlines this week in local newspapers about homicide counts for 2025 as murders declined in most cities across the country relative to 2024. To pick some headlines at random from Google News:
There were no homicides in Modesto in all of 2025, mayor confirms
Norfolk homicides hit historic low in 2025
Albuquerque homicides in 2025 drop to lowest level since 2016, but still 30+ more than record low
Birmingham homicides dropped to shocking 10-year low in 2025: ‘Every number is a person’
Memphis homicides drop in 2025, lower than previous two years
But not all the news was good:
Milwaukee homicides increase in 2025, despite overall drop in violent crimes
Why the good news?
No doubt there are multiple reasons, but the most plausible seems like the man’s explanation for why he bangs his thumb with a hammer: “Because it feels so good when I stop.”
Well, the U.S. went through a murderous decade starting with the emergence of Black Lives Matter at Ferguson in August 2014 when America’s ruling class decided that what African Americans needed most was less rule of law.
Eventually, however, banging their thumbs with a hammer stopped seeming like such a good idea and they stopped carrying so much about BLM, so black deaths went down.
Here are deaths by homicide by week as counted by the CDC’s WONDER database of causes of death, which has weekly counts going back to January 2018. The CDC maintains a six month lag and takes Christmas week off, so this graphs goes up through June 14, 2025:
Presumably, the second half of 2025 would show a continued decline.
As I may have mentioned once or twice,
Paywall here.
