As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the United States appears poised to achieve a remarkable milestone in public safety: the lowest murder rate in recorded history.
Crime data analyst Jeff Asher projects that 2026 will see the nation's murder rate fall below the previous record low established in 2025. His analysis, published in late May and based on data collected from approximately 600 police agencies through his site The Crime Index, reveals that murders declined 18.7 percent during the first four months of this year compared to the same period in 2025. Overall violent crime decreased 6.4 percent during that timeframe.
"The United States almost certainly had the lowest murder rate ever recorded in 2025, with the FBI having data back to 1960," Asher told NPR. "And the available evidence suggests that we're going to go even lower this year."
The projected decline represents a dramatic reversal from recent years. According to The Crime Index, the national murder rate surged to 6.8 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021, marking a 54 percent increase over the 2014 low of 4.4 deaths per 100,000. That spike prompted widespread concern among criminologists and law enforcement officials that the country had entered a sustained period of elevated violence, particularly involving retaliatory shootings among young people.
Regional data from King County, Washington, which encompasses Seattle, illustrates the magnitude of the turnaround. The prosecuting attorney's office documented 384 shots-fired incidents and 22 homicides during the first quarter of 2022. By the first quarter of 2026, those figures had dropped to 204 incidents and nine deaths.
"We're still having gang violence. We're still having drive-by shootings. We're still having armed robberies," Gary Ernsdorff, who supervises the Special Operations Unit in the King County prosecutor's office, told NPR. "But the numbers across the board in each one of those categories seem to be decreasing."
Ernsdorff attributes much of the improvement to society returning to normal patterns following the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. The period of widespread school closures, unemployment, and social isolation created conditions conducive to increased criminal activity, he suggests.
However, Jerry Ratcliffe, faculty director of the master of applied criminology program at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that other developed nations did not experience comparable crime spikes during the pandemic. He argues that the social upheaval following George Floyd's murder in 2020 disrupted the data-driven, targeted policing strategies that had contributed to declining crime rates since the 1990s.
"That's something we saw withdraw for a year or two. What we're seeing now is a re-engagement of policing a few years down the line. And we continue to see again that crime reduction," Ratcliffe told NPR.
LaMaria Pope, who works for Choose 180, a violence-prevention nonprofit focused on young people in the Seattle area, witnessed the transformation firsthand. She recalls the anxiety of the pandemic years when firearms proliferated and young people perceived reduced law enforcement presence.
"There was a lot of guns floating around," Pope told NPR. "There was almost nothing to do but engage in crime. And knowing that, 'Oh, we want to defund the police, if we call they're not going to come for two hours' — kids are smart and they picked up on that."
Pope credits the resumption of in-person programming, school attendance, and structured activities for much of the progress. Nevertheless, she emphasizes that retaliatory violence remains an ongoing concern in the communities she serves.
"I will say it is better than it was four years ago," Pope told NPR. "But we're still fighting that fight. It is not over."
Important context tempers the optimism surrounding these statistics. While the FBI maintains national murder data extending back to 1960, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention possesses homicide records dating to approximately 1930. A few years during the 1950s recorded slightly lower rates than 2025, though the projected 2026 figures could surpass even those historical benchmarks.
Additionally, even a record-low homicide rate of 4.1 or 4.0 per 100,000 would remain approximately double Canada's rate of 1.9 per 100,000. The United States would still record between 13,000 and 14,000 murders annually at such rates.
"We're still talking about 13- or 14-thousand murders," Asher told NPR. "This is not a solved problem."
