The variety of murders in the United States rose by round 30 percent in 2020 over the earlier yr, to some 21,500, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) mentioned Monday.
Numerous giant US cities had already reported a rise in the variety of homicides final yr however the FBI figures supplied the primary image of the scenario nationwide.
It was the steepest rise in the variety of murders for the reason that FBI started amassing information in the Nineteen Sixties, however the whole variety of such killings nonetheless remained beneath that of the Nineteen Eighties.
The variety of murders final yr rose sharply from June, with no a part of the United States was spared — though the southern state of Louisiana continued to have the best homicide charge in the nation.
According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, 77 percent of the murders in 2020 had been dedicated with a firearm, up from 74 percent in 2019.
Experts haven’t supplied a transparent clarification for the rise in the variety of murders final yr however have pointed to the destabilizing impression of the Covid pandemic and an increase in gun gross sales.
The FBI mentioned some 16,000 federal, state, county, metropolis, college, faculty and tribal companies had submitted information to the crime report.
The FBI has not launched murder statistics to this point for 2021, however the numbers from a number of giant cities point out there was no let-up in the elevated homicide charge.
According to World Bank figures, there have been 6.5 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in the United States in 2018, in contrast with 35 in Mexico, 27 in Brazil, eight in Russia and one per 100,000 in France and Germany.
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