07/29/2026
A new analysis of FBI homicide data shows that just 2% of U.S. counties hold 54% of all murders, while more than half of the counties have zero murders in a year and roughly 69% have one or fewer. The worst 5% of counties—mostly big urban areas—account for about 71% of murders, even though they contain less than half the population, and inside those counties the violence is packed into a small cluster of ZIP codes and streets.
In other words, “murder in America” is not a uniform national problem spread evenly across all communities; it is a concentrated problem in a small set of urban jurisdictions where policy, prosecution, and culture are doing most of the damage.
Read the full breakdown at the link in the comments.
