This week, we're looking at a sorely undercovered national story: the murder rate is declining at an incredible rate. At the same time, the suicide rate is headed the other way.
To explore why that divergence has happened, we've got Pew Research Center's John Gramlich on the show to discuss the details. He wrote a piece looking at the most recent FBI and CDC data on gun murder and suicide. He said the results are remarkable.
The murder rate is plummeting. It's back to pre-pandemic levels and shows no sign of leveling off. Gramlich said the decline is incredible and rare.
He also described how the role of guns in murder has changed over time as well. The post-pandemic data shows that the portion of guns used in murders has shifted significantly.
The same is true for the portion of gun deaths that are due to suicides rather than murders. Largely, Gramlich noted, because murders have fallen substantially while suicides have gone up a bit. Even though the gun suicide rate didn't climb dramatically, as the gun murder rate did in 2020, it has slowly climbed to near-record rates.
Meanwhile, Gramlich said crime data from sources beyond the FBI and CDC indicate the gun murder rate is nearing record lows.