Is Political Violence Actually Getting Worse in the US?
There seems to be more of it than there used to be, but it’s hard to categorize.
Mass attacks or politically targeted ones receive a lot of attention.
Photographer: Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
By the simplest, most reliable measure we have — murder statistics — the US has been getting less and less violent lately. Murders rose sharply early in the pandemic, but if the 20% murder decline over the first half of the year in the 548 jurisdictions tracked by the Real-Time Crime Index were to hold true for the entire nation for the entire year, the 2025 murder rate would be lowest since before 1960.
Medical advances mean shooting victims are much more likely to survive now than in 1960, so such long-run comparisons are to some extent misleading. But (1) Americans are still much less likely to die of murder than they were a few decades ago, which is good news, and (2) medical advances don’t explain what might turn out to be a 40% decline over the past five years.