The Trump presidency has been one of records – record low unemployment, record gains in the stock market, record economic optimism, record regulatory cuts, and now in crime reduction.
The FBI’s crime report for the year 2018 has been released, and it shows that America is becoming safer. It also found that in a year where gun control again became an issue brought to the forefront politically, gun violence declined overall, especially among the most politicized weapons.
According to the report, violent decline declined from 3.3% from 2017 to 369 offenses per 100,000 people, while property crimes fell 6.3% to 2,200 per 100,000. This marked the sixteenth consecutive year that both types of crime fell. An additional 39 agencies reported crime to the FBI from 2017, to 18,586 total. Of note, total losses from property crime totaled $16.4 billion, or only roughly $50 per American, which admittedly was far smaller than I expected.
Most relevant, firearm homicides fell 7% from 10,982 in 2017 to 10,265 in 2018.
When isolated by type of firearm, firearm violence fell the most in 2018 among the types of weapons that were demonized most in the media – rifles. Rifle homicides fell 26% from 403 to 297.
Rifles were a relatively unpopular method to commit homicide with, as they always have been historically. While they always are mentioned in the news when they’re used to kill multiple people at once, they compose a sliver of total murders. Knives and other cutting instruments killed over five times as many people, or 1,515. Blunt objects (such as clubs and hammers) killed 443, while fists killed 668.
What this latest FBI crime report proves is that America is continuously becoming a safer country without interruption. From 1993-2010 firearm homicides were cut in half, and they’ve only continued to fall since.
And that’s all happened without gun control advocates getting what they want.
