Murder Is Still Down A Lot As Summer Approaches

Checking in on the nation's murder trend.

A few months ago I wrote that “we probably should be waiting until hurricane season starts…before drawing more firm conclusions about national crime trends from a large sample of cities.” Well, the bad news is that what appears to be an above-average (terrifyingly above-average?) hurricane season has started. The good news though is that multiple measures are pointing at a large decline in murder and gun violence occurring nationally in 2024. It’s late enough in the year now to believe such an outcome is likely to happen based on historical trends (though appreciating that an anomalous event could change things).

Murder is down around 18 to 19 percent (it’s -18.5 percent as I write on May 30) in more than 260 cities with available YTD data for 2024 compared to the same timeframe in 2023. Murder was down 20.5 percent in the sample of over 175 cities back then and it’s down 19.1 percent using those exact same cities now, so the level of decline has come down but just a bit in the last two months.

All of which means that murder is down a lot in 2024 relative to 2023. It’s still too early to say just how much murder will decline in 2024, but it’s late enough in the year with a large enough sample to say that murder will likely fall considerably and perhaps historically so this year after a large decline in 2023.

It’s too early to say with much confidence what the change in murder will be in 2024 for any given city (your city might be -10 percent now but see an increase by the end of the year), but a sample of this size is fairly good at predicting the direction and scope of a crime change nationally even at this point of the year. That said, of course something could happen to change the national trend, it would just be outside of the historical norm.

The FBI hasn't released data on the first quarter of 2024 (that should come in a few weeks), so this assessment comes from non-FBI data. There’s murder data from over 260 cities, shooting data from 30 cities that publish it, and national data on shootings from the Gun Violence Archive. Taken together these three sources all point to a large decline this year.

Murder Data

Murder data has been collected from over 260 cities with available data so far this year. This information was sourced from official sources (published on an agency website) for 125 cities, published by a State UCR program for 121 cities, published by a media outlet for 11 cities, and published in Major Cities Chiefs Association’s first quarter report for 5 cities¹. The sample is more robust and the decline is greater than it was at this point last year when murder was down around 12 percent in 90 cities with available data.

The sample includes all cities that I could find with a population of 50,000 or more. There were also 11 cities that are under 50,000 that were included because they reported at least 2 or more murders YTD in 2023 or 2024. There are 10 cities with 1 million or more people, 73 cities between 250,000 and 1 million, 97 cities between 100,000 and 250,000, and 81 cities of under 100,000 people. Nearly all cities (255 of 262) have data available through March, 218 have data available through April, 81 cities have data as of at least mid-May (arbitrarily May 10), and 69 cities have data as of at least late May (arbitrarily May 25).

Murder is down over 40 percent in Boston, Fort Worth, Columbus, Seattle, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Philadelphia (amongst others). There are 20 cities in the sample with a double-digit decrease in murders YTD compared to 3 cities with a double-digit increase (Charlotte, Baton Rouge, and Savannah). Murder is down or even in 41 of the 51 cities that reported at least 20 or more murders at this point in 2023.

Savannah is the weirdest outlier with 12 murders this year compared to 1 at this point last year, but a deeper dive shows 2023’s count to this point to be the outlier. There were 16 murders in Savannah at this point in 2022 and the average for this point in the year between 2018 and 2022 was 12 murders. Savannah finished 2023 with 28 murders, so I wouldn’t expect the city’s current 1,100 percent increase to persist (it’s also a good lesson in reading too much into YTD data for a city!).

The decline in murder is even more impressive with respect to YTD 2022. I found 177 cities in late May with data through at least April 2024 and comparable data for 2022. Murder is down 29 percent in those cities, including a 50+ percent decline in Baltimore, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Jacksonville, Fort Worth, Little Rock, and more relative to 2022. Only one of the 177 cities (Charlotte) has had 10 or more murders so far this year compared to the same time in 2022 while 26 cities were down double digits.

City Shooting Data

There are 30 cities with available shooting data that I could find, and shootings are down in 26 of them. Unsurprisingly, shootings are down quite a bit in cities where murders are down quite a bit (New Orleans, Boston, Philadelphia, etc). A few cities didn’t differentiate between firearm and non-firearm homicides, so I’ve lumped them together plus non-fatal shooting victims to give a hybrid shooting estimate.

NOTE: I transposed the Seattle figures, shootings are up 48 vs 40 YTD rather than down by those figures. Apologies for the error!

Durham is the only city with a double-digit increase in shooting victims though murder is down slightly there and criminal firearm discharge incidents are down substantially.

Gun Violence Archive Data

Data from the Gun Violence Archive provides a clear look at declining gun violence nationally. Fatal shootings are down about 10 percent, non-fatal shootings are down about 13 percent and overall shooting victims are down around 12 percent through May relative to 2023.

I tend to thing about data from the GVA is inexact but accurate and, as such, provides an important data point in favor of a large decline in gun violence occurring nationally in 2024 through May. Shootings are still up around 15 percent relative to where they were through May 2019, but comparing the monthly percent change of each month relative to the same month the previous year suggests that the downward trend may be accelerating (though obviously there’s a lot of noise from month to month).

Mass shootings are also falling with a 32 percent decline in the number of mass shootings (4+ shooting victims in an incident) relative to the first five months of 2023. There were roughly 49 such incidents in May 2024 compared to 83 in May 2023.

Conclusion

A preponderance of evidence points to a strong decline in gun violence and murder in the United States in 2024. This assessment will soon be supplemented by the FBI’s quarterly data covering January through March so it is not solely reliant on the FBI’s data. Rather than wondering whether murder will go up or down in 2024 (or if it's a NIBRS thing), the real analytic issues for the rest of the year are measuring the degree of the decline and seeing whether it can sustain at this level or begins to level off as the year marches on.

1. LAPD is providing murder counts weekly via email as the department undergoes a transition to a new Records Management System.