Murder Hits All-Time Low (Ft. AH Datalytic's Jeff Asher)

This week, the FBI released its latest crime data report, and the news was good.

Murder fell faster than at any point in history, and it hit an all-time low last year. To explain the details of what's in the agency's report, we have one of the most prominent crime data analysts in the country: Jeff Asher.

Asher runs AH Datalytics and tracks real-time crime data. He has been predicting since last year the FBI's numbers would come in pretty much exactly where they did. Still, he said it's impossible to understate the recent trend. We've gone from relative stability in the murder rate to a massive surge to an even greater climbdown.

Now, we've reached an all-time low. And Asher said the decline hasn't stopped. The data he's gathered, which correlates closely with the FBI's data, indicates the murder rate is still falling in 2026. And the drop-off has been consistent across the nation and across demographics.

He said that defies the simplest partisan explanations for the decline. Asher explained his preferred theory for why this is all happening, but he also admitted it's impossible to say for sure at this point.