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.

Here's a link to John's piece: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/28/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-us/

Special Guest: John Gramlich.

The murder rate, which has been on the decline for a couple of years now, is on pace to hit a record low. That's what the early data collected by Jeff Asher's AH Datalytics indicates. Asher joins the show to break down the numbers he's seeing so far.

He said the murder rate surged during the pandemic, but it has already fallen back to those levels and kept dropping further.

While the FBI's murder data for 2025 won't be out for nearly a year, Asher collects crime data from many of the same sources. He said his data shows a huge early decline in the murder rate that would equate to an all-time low if sustained. He cautioned that the decline is likely to slow as the year progresses, but it should still hit a record.

Special Guest: Jeff Asher.