If you watch the news you might be under the impression that the United States is in bad shape when it comes to crime. Every night on the local news you hear about murders and other violent crimes. It could lead anybody to believe that society is in free-fall. But is this really the case?
It turns out all major crimes are trending down from their 50-year highs in the 70s, 80s and 90s. In fact, one crime was near a 50-year low in 2010 when indexed per 100,000 people. More on that in a moment. Whether we are talking about assault, vehicle theft, burglary, rape or murder, all indicators are down from their highs.
I've seen those numbers, the problem (from a gun control perspective) is that they went up after 1968 and didn't start falling till 1991. The 68 GCA correlated with a 23 year violent crime/homicide spike ...