Writing in The Atlantic, David A. Graham looks at the numbers for the murder rate in the U.S. and finds them troubling. See his reasoning.
There were some 21,500 murders in 2020—nearly 5,000 more than in 2019. That’s a 29 percent spike, far outpacing the previous record increase, 12.7 percent, set in 1968. Those numbers come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report.
And things have not yet calmed down. Other data collected by Asher suggest that the murder rate in 2021 is still rising, though it is doing so more slowly, with a 9.9 percent increase over the same period in 2020. (snip) Last year was not just a blip. The U.S. hasn’t figured out how to stop its homicide spike.
If anything, the Uniform Crime Report data suggest that public reaction to the increase has been muted compared with the scale of the problem.
Unlike the crime wave of the 1980s and ’90s, which affected many Americans of all walks of life, the current spike appears to be heavily concentrated. Many homicide victims are Black men, living in predominantly Black neighborhoods.
So, let's understand what Graham has told us. There has been a big boost in murders in the Black community, meaning Black Americans are who is impacted. Logically, those impacted would be the "public" doing the reacting.
However, the only proven solution to gun crime is more police doing more "stop and frisk" proactive policing. Such policing ends up with many Black young people having a police record.
Police records interfere with subsequent schooling and employment. So the Black community is understandably ambivalent about asking for action to reduce the murders in their midst. Thus, their response is "muted."
Meanwhile, rap/hip hop culture continues to celebrate using guns to solve interpersonal difficulties.
