In 2023, 8,842 murderers in the United States were white, while 6,405 were Black. A further 461 murderers were of another race, including American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. However, not all law enforcement agencies submitted homicide data to the FBI in 2023, meaning there may be more murder offenders of each race than depicted. While the majority of circumstances behind murders in the U.S. are unknown, narcotics, robberies, and gang killings are most commonly identified.

In 2023, the FBI reported that there were 9,284 Black murder victims in the United States and 7,289 white murder victims. In comparison, there were 554 murder victims of unknown race and 586 victims of another race. Victims of inequality? In recent years, the role of racial inequality in violent crimes such as robberies, assaults, and homicides has gained public attention. In particular, the issue of police brutality has led to increasing attention following the murder of George Floyd, an African American who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. Studies show that the rate of fatal police shootings for Black Americans was more than double the rate reported of other races. Crime reporting National crime data in the United States is based off the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s new crime reporting system, which requires law enforcement agencies to self-report their data in detail. Due to the recent implementation of this system, less crime data has been reported, with some states such as Delaware and Pennsylvania declining to report any data to the FBI at all in the last few years, suggesting that the Bureau's data may not fully reflect accurate information on crime in the United States.

In 2023, there were 14,327 murder offenders in the United States who were male, in comparison to 1,898 who were female. However, there were also 5,279 murder offenders where their gender was unknown. Homicides in the U.S. Murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the United States is defined as the willful killing of another human being. Justifiable homicides, or cases where a felon is killed by an officer in the line of duty or a felon is killed during a felony by a private citizen, are not included in murder counts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The total number of murders varies from state to state in the U.S., with more populous states having higher numbers of murders. Murder offenders and victims Most murder offenders in the United States are between the ages of 17 and 39, with the number of offenders declining steadily after age 40. Additionally, the highest rate of death by homicide was found among males between the ages of 15 and 24. The highest rate of death by homicide for females was for girls under the age of one.

U.S. murder/homicide rate per 100K population for 2021 was 6.81, a 6.02% increase from 2020.

<ul style='margin-top:20px;'>

<li>U.S. murder/homicide rate per 100K population for 2020 was <strong>6.42</strong>, a <strong>28.78% increase</strong> from 2019.</li>
<li>U.S. murder/homicide rate per 100K population for 2019 was <strong>4.99</strong>, a <strong>1.14% increase</strong> from 2018.</li>
<li>U.S. murder/homicide rate per 100K population for 2018 was <strong>4.93</strong>, a <strong>5.99% decline</strong> from 2017.</li>
</ul>Intentional homicides are estimates of unlawful homicides purposely inflicted as a result of domestic disputes, interpersonal violence, violent conflicts over land resources, intergang violence over turf or control, and predatory violence and killing by armed groups. Intentional homicide does not include all intentional killing; the difference is usually in the organization of the killing. Individuals or small groups usually commit homicide, whereas killing in armed conflict is usually committed by fairly cohesive groups of up to several hundred members and is thus usually excluded.

California reported the largest number of homicides to the FBI in 2023, at 1,929 for the year. Texas recorded the second-highest number of murders, with 1,845 for the year. Homicide victim demographics There were a total of 19,252 reported homicide cases in the U.S. in 2023. When looking at murder victims by gender and ethnicity, the vast majority were male, while just over half of the victims were Black or African American. In addition, homicide victims in the United States were found most likely to be between the ages of 20 and 34 years old, with the majority of victims aged between 17 to 54 years old. Are murders up? In short, no – since the 1990s the number of murders in the U.S. has decreased significantly. In 1990, the murder rate per 100,000 people stood at 9.4, and stood at 5.7 in 2023. It should be noted though that the number of homicides increased slightly from 2014 to 2017, although figures declined again in 2018 and 2019, before ticking up once more in 2020 and 2021. Despite this decline, when viewed in international comparison, the U.S. murder rate is still notably high. For example, the Canadian homicide rate stood at 1.94 in 2023, while the homicide rate in England and Wales was even lower.

These data examine the effects on total crime rates of changes in the demographic composition of the population and changes in criminality of specific age and race groups. The collection contains estimates from national data of annual age-by-race specific arrest rates and crime rates for murder, robbery, and burglary over the 21-year period 1965-1985. The data address the following questions: (1) Are the crime rates reported by the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) data series valid indicators of national crime trends? (2) How much of the change between 1965 and 1985 in total crime rates for murder, robbery, and burglary is attributable to changes in the age and race composition of the population, and how much is accounted for by changes in crime rates within age-by-race specific subgroups? (3) What are the effects of age and race on subgroup crime rates for murder, robbery, and burglary? (4) What is the effect of time period on subgroup crime rates for murder, robbery, and burglary? (5) What is the effect of birth cohort, particularly the effect of the very large (baby-boom) cohorts following World War II, on subgroup crime rates for murder, robbery, and burglary? (6) What is the effect of interactions among age, race, time period, and cohort on subgroup crime rates for murder, robbery, and burglary? (7) How do patterns of age-by-race specific crime rates for murder, robbery, and burglary compare for different demographic subgroups? The variables in this study fall into four categories. The first category includes variables that define the race-age cohort of the unit of observation. The values of these variables are directly available from UCR and include year of observation (from 1965-1985), age group, and race. The second category of variables were computed using UCR data pertaining to the first category of variables. These are period, birth cohort of age group in each year, and average cohort size for each single age within each single group. The third category includes variables that describe the annual age-by-race specific arrest rates for the different crime types. These variables were estimated for race, age, group, crime type, and year using data directly available from UCR and population estimates from Census publications. The fourth category includes variables similar to the third group. Data for estimating these variables were derived from available UCR data on the total number of offenses known to the police and total arrests in combination with the age-by-race specific arrest rates for the different crime types.

The graph illustrates the murder rate in the United States from 1985 to 2023. The x-axis represents the years, labeled with two-digit abbreviations from '85 to '23, while the y-axis shows the annual murder rate per 100,000 individuals. Throughout this 39-year period, the murder rate fluctuates between a high of 10.66 in 1991 and a low of 4.7 in 2014. Overall, the data reveals a significant downward trend in the murder rate from the mid-1980s, reaching its lowest point in the mid-2010s, followed by slight increases in the most recent years.

3,013 murderers in the United States in 2023 were individuals between the ages of 20 and 24. In the same year, there were seven murderer offenders aged between one and four years. Murder rate in the United States Despite some feeling that violent crime in the United States is on the rise, perhaps due to sensationalized media coverage, the murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate has declined steeply since 1990. The murder rate has risen some since 2014, but it is nowhere near its peak in 1991. Murder victims in the U.S. The vast majority of murders in the U.S. were committed with firearms, including handguns, rifles, shotguns, and other unidentified guns or firearms. This is generally attributed to the high rate of gun ownership in the United States, which makes guns more accessible than in other countries.

In 2023, around 2,444 homicide victims in the United States were aged between 20 and 24 years old. A further 2,362 murder victims were between the ages of 30 and 34 years old. Most murder victims in the United States in 2023 were between the ages of 17 and 54 years old.

Intentional homicides (per 100,000 people) in United States was reported at 6.8075 in 2021, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United States - Intentional homicides (per 100;000 people) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on June of 2025.

THIS DATASET WAS LAST UPDATED AT 2:11 AM EASTERN ON JUNE 7

OVERVIEW

2019 had the most mass killings since at least the 1970s, according to the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings Database.

In all, there were 45 mass killings, defined as when four or more people are killed excluding the perpetrator. Of those, 33 were mass shootings . This summer was especially violent, with three high-profile public mass shootings occurring in the span of just four weeks, leaving 38 killed and 66 injured.

A total of 229 people died in mass killings in 2019.

The AP's analysis found that more than 50% of the incidents were family annihilations, which is similar to prior years. Although they are far less common, the 9 public mass shootings during the year were the most deadly type of mass murder, resulting in 73 people's deaths, not including the assailants.

One-third of the offenders died at the scene of the killing or soon after, half from suicides.

About this Dataset

The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings database tracks all U.S. homicides since 2006 involving four or more people killed (not including the offender) over a short period of time (24 hours) regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive. The database includes information on these and other characteristics concerning the incidents, offenders, and victims.

The AP/USA TODAY/Northeastern database represents the most complete tracking of mass murders by the above definition currently available. Other efforts, such as the Gun Violence Archive or Everytown for Gun Safety may include events that do not meet our criteria, but a review of these sites and others indicates that this database contains every event that matches the definition, including some not tracked by other organizations.

This data will be updated periodically and can be used as an ongoing resource to help cover these events.

Using this Dataset

To get basic counts of incidents of mass killings and mass shootings by year nationwide, use these queries:

Mass killings by year

Mass shootings by year

To get these counts just for your state:

Filter killings by state

Definition of "mass murder"

Mass murder is defined as the intentional killing of four or more victims by any means within a 24-hour period, excluding the deaths of unborn children and the offender(s). The standard of four or more dead was initially set by the FBI.

This definition does not exclude cases based on method (e.g., shootings only), type or motivation (e.g., public only), victim-offender relationship (e.g., strangers only), or number of locations (e.g., one). The time frame of 24 hours was chosen to eliminate conflation with spree killers, who kill multiple victims in quick succession in different locations or incidents, and to satisfy the traditional requirement of occurring in a “single incident.”

Offenders who commit mass murder during a spree (before or after committing additional homicides) are included in the database, and all victims within seven days of the mass murder are included in the victim count. Negligent homicides related to driving under the influence or accidental fires are excluded due to the lack of offender intent. Only incidents occurring within the 50 states and Washington D.C. are considered.

Methodology

Project researchers first identified potential incidents using the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR). Homicide incidents in the SHR were flagged as potential mass murder cases if four or more victims were reported on the same record, and the type of death was murder or non-negligent manslaughter.

Cases were subsequently verified utilizing media accounts, court documents, academic journal articles, books, and local law enforcement records obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Each data point was corroborated by multiple sources, which were compiled into a single document to assess the quality of information.

In case(s) of contradiction among sources, official law enforcement or court records were used, when available, followed by the most recent media or academic source.

Case information was subsequently compared with every other known mass murder database to ensure reliability and validity. Incidents listed in the SHR that could not be independently verified were excluded from the database.

Project researchers also conducted extensive searches for incidents not reported in the SHR during the time period, utilizing internet search engines, Lexis-Nexis, and Newspapers.com. Search terms include: [number] dead, [number] killed, [number] slain, [number] murdered, [number] homicide, mass murder, mass shooting, massacre, rampage, family killing, familicide, and arson murder. Offender, victim, and location names were also directly searched when available.

This project started at USA TODAY in 2012.

Contacts

Contact AP Data Editor Justin Myers with questions, suggestions or comments about this dataset at jmyers@ap.org. The Northeastern University researcher working with AP and USA TODAY is Professor James Alan Fox, who can be reached at j.fox@northeastern.edu or 617-416-4400.

Virgin Islands (U.S.) murder/homicide rate per 100K population for 2012 was 49.63, a 16.33% increase from 2011.

<ul style='margin-top:20px;'>

<li>Virgin Islands (U.S.) murder/homicide rate per 100K population for 2011 was <strong>42.66</strong>, a <strong>19.14% decline</strong> from 2010.</li>
<li>Virgin Islands (U.S.) murder/homicide rate per 100K population for 2010 was <strong>52.76</strong>, a <strong>12.34% increase</strong> from 2009.</li>
<li>Virgin Islands (U.S.) murder/homicide rate per 100K population for 2009 was <strong>46.96</strong>, a <strong>8.71% increase</strong> from 2008.</li>
</ul>Intentional homicides are estimates of unlawful homicides purposely inflicted as a result of domestic disputes, interpersonal violence, violent conflicts over land resources, intergang violence over turf or control, and predatory violence and killing by armed groups. Intentional homicide does not include all intentional killing; the difference is usually in the organization of the killing. Individuals or small groups usually commit homicide, whereas killing in armed conflict is usually committed by fairly cohesive groups of up to several hundred members and is thus usually excluded.

In 2023, the FBI reported that there were 13,789 victims of murder who identified as male, compared to 3,849 victims of murder who identified as female in the United States. A further 75 murder victims were of an unknown gender in that year.

In 2023, the rate of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in the United States was at 5.7 cases per 100,000 of the population. This is a decrease from the previous year, when the murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate stood at 6.5 per 100,000 of the population. However, due to the FBI's transition to a new crime reporting system, only not all law enforcement agencies submitted crime data to the FBI for 2023. As a result, figures may not accurately reflect the rate of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in the U.S. in this year.

The average for 2017 based on 97 countries was 7.4 homicides per 100,000 people. The highest value was in El Salvador: 61.8 homicides per 100,000 people and the lowest value was in Japan: 0.2 homicides per 100,000 people. The indicator is available from 1990 to 2017. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

This project was designed to isolate the effects that individual crimes have on wage rates and housing prices, as gauged by individuals' and households' decisionmaking preferences changing over time. Additionally, this project sought to compute a dollar value that individuals would bear in their wages and housing costs to reduce the rates of specific crimes. The study used multiple decades of information obtained from counties across the United States to create a panel dataset. This approach was designed to compensate for the problem of collinearity by tracking how housing and occupation choices within particular locations changed over the decade considering all amenities or disamenities, including specific crime rates. Census data were obtained for this project from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) constructed by Ruggles and Sobek (1997). Crime data were obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). Other data were collected from the American Chamber of Commerce Researchers Association, County and City Data Book, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency. Independent variables for the Wages Data (Part 1) include years of education, school enrollment, sex, ability to speak English well, race, veteran status, employment status, and occupation and industry. Independent variables for the Housing Data (Part 2) include number of bedrooms, number of other rooms, building age, whether unit was a condominium or detached single-family house, acreage, and whether the unit had a kitchen, plumbing, public sewers, and water service. Both files include the following variables as separating factors: census geographic division, cost-of-living index, percentage unemployed, percentage vacant housing, labor force employed in manufacturing, living near a coastline, living or working in the central city, per capita local taxes, per capita intergovernmental revenue, per capita property taxes, population density, and commute time to work. Lastly, the following variables measured amenities or disamenities: average precipitation, temperature, windspeed, sunshine, humidity, teacher-pupil ratio, number of Superfund sites, total suspended particulate in air, and rates of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, auto theft, violent crimes, and property crimes.

There has been little research on United States homicide rates from a long-term perspective, primarily because there has been no consistent data series on a particular place preceding the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), which began its first full year in 1931. To fill this research gap, this project created a data series on homicides per capita for New York City that spans two centuries. The goal was to create a site-specific, individual-based data series that could be used to examine major social shifts related to homicide, such as mass immigration, urban growth, war, demographic changes, and changes in laws. Data were also gathered on various other sites, particularly in England, to allow for comparisons on important issues, such as the post-World War II wave of violence. The basic approach to the data collection was to obtain the best possible estimate of annual counts and the most complete information on individual homicides. The annual count data (Parts 1 and 3) were derived from multiple sources, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports and Supplementary Homicide Reports, as well as other official counts from the New York City Police Department and the City Inspector in the early 19th century. The data include a combined count of murder and manslaughter because charge bargaining often blurs this legal distinction. The individual-level data (Part 2) were drawn from coroners' indictments held by the New York City Municipal Archives, and from daily newspapers. Duplication was avoided by keeping a record for each victim. The estimation technique known as "capture-recapture" was used to estimate homicides not listed in either source. Part 1 variables include counts of New York City homicides, arrests, and convictions, as well as the homicide rate, race or ethnicity and gender of victims, type of weapon used, and source of data. Part 2 includes the date of the murder, the age, sex, and race of the offender and victim, and whether the case led to an arrest, trial, conviction, execution, or pardon. Part 3 contains annual homicide counts and rates for various comparison sites including Liverpool, London, Kent, Canada, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco.

In 2019, there were six deaths by homicide per 100,000 of the population in the United States, compared to 5.9 deaths by homicide in the previous year. This is an increase from 1950, when there were 5.1 deaths by homicide per 100,000 resident population in the United States. However, within the provided time period, the death rate for homicide in the U.S. was highest in 1980, when there were 10.4 deaths by homicide per 100,000 of the population in the United States.

Homicides in the United States

The term homicide is used when a human being is killed by another human being. Criminal homicide takes several forms, for example murder; but homicide is not always a crime, it also includes affirmative defense, insanity, self-defense or the execution of convicted criminals. In the United States, youth homicide has especially been seen as a problem of urban areas, due to poverty, limited adult supervision, involvement in drug and gang activities, and school failure. Both homicide rates and suicide rates in the U.S. among people aged 20 to 24 and teenagers aged 15 to 19 have vastly increased since 2001.

In 2022, the New Orleans-Metairie, LA metro area recorded the highest homicide rate of U.S. cities with a population over 250,000, at 27.1 homicides per 100,000 residents, followed by the Memphis, TN-MS-AR metro area. However, homicide data was not recorded in all U.S. metro areas, meaning that there may be some cities with a higher homicide rate.

St. Louis

St. Louis, which had a murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate of 11.6 in 2022, is the second-largest city by population in Missouri. It is home to many famous treasures such as the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, Washington University in St. Louis, the Saint Louis Zoo, and the renowned Gateway Arch. It is home to many corporations such as Monsanto, Arch Coal, and Emerson Electric. The economy of St. Louis is centered around business and healthcare, and in addition is home to ten Fortune 500 companies.

Crime in St. Louis

Despite all of this, St. Louis suffers from high levels of crime and violence. As of 2023, it was listed as the seventh most dangerous city in the world as a result of their extremely high murder rate. Not only does St. Louis have one of the highest homicide rates in the United States, it also reports one of the highest numbers of violent crimes. In spite of high crime levels, the GDP of the St. Louis metropolitan area has been increasing since 2001.

Handguns are by far the most common murder weapon used in the United States, accounting for 7,159 homicides in 2023. This is followed by firearms of an unstated type, with 5,295 cases in that year. Why do murders happen in the U.S.? While most of the time the circumstances of murders in the U.S. remain unknown, homicides due to narcotics come in as the second most common circumstance – making them more common than, for example, gang killings. Despite these gruesome facts, the violent crime rate has fallen significantly since 1990, and the United States is much safer than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. Knife crime vs disease: Leading causes of death The death rate in the U.S. had hovered around the same level since 1990 until there was a large increase due to the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years. Heart disease, cancer, and accidents were the three leading causes of death in the country in 2022. The rate of death from heart disease is significantly higher than the homicide rate in the United States, at 167.2 deaths per 100,000 population compared to a 5.7 homicides per 100,000. Given just 1,562 murders were caused by knife crime, it is fair to say that heart disease is a far bigger killer in the U.S.