Credit here to the liberal site The Intercept, which did extensive work gathering data and crunching the numbers. The Intercept consistently does in-depth reporting and, while it absolutely leans left (and sometimes way left), it is not a site that refuses to deal in fact so as to cheerlead for Democrats.
The numbers are astonishing. We haven’t seen a one-year jump in murders like this since 1968:
AMID THE PANDEMIC, lockdown orders, and nationwide protests against police violence, a historically large increase in murders occurred in 2020. Previously, the largest recorded one-year rise in murders in U.S. history was a 12.7 percent increase in 1968. Last year, meanwhile, data from nearly 12,000 law enforcement agencies released by the FBI, running through September, shows murders up 21 percent nationally. This matches data we collected from a sample of agencies from 60 large cities showing a 36 percent increase in murders in those cities, as well as a Council on Criminal Justice analysis from 34 cities finding a 30 percent increase in 2020 compared to 2019. This increase still leaves the murder rate nearly 40 percent below the peak rate reached in the 1990s.
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We found murder was up through April relative to 2019 in 11 of 14 cities that publish monthly murder data. Princeton University sociologist Patrick Sharkey found that fatal shootings had risen in 75 percent of the 99 largest cities through April. It’s not fully clear what caused the murder rate to be higher early in 2020 compared to 2019, though a variety of factors such as increased domestic violence early in the pandemic, warmer weather, or just plain randomness may have contributed.
Violence accelerated throughout the summer in the second phase of 2020’s murder increase. Cities across the country had big increases in gun violence over the summer. Murder was up 15 percent through June in the FBI’s data, and many cities saw sudden and dramatic upswings in July and August. Portland, Oregon, for example, averaged nine shootings per month over the first six months of the year, but there were 35 and 36 in July and August respectively. In Omaha, Nebraska, 32 people were nonfatally shot in July 2020 compared to 4 in July 2019. Shootings in New York City increased from 123 in July 2019 to 316 in July 2020, and 497 people were shot in Philadelphia in July and August 2020 compared to 276 over the same months of 2019. It is certainly possible that local factors played a role, but a change this sudden and widespread calls for a more comprehensive explanation.
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The obvious jaw-dropper here, at least on first glance, is that this happened with so many people staying home most of the time. Yet when you think about it, that was almost certainly a driver of the increase rather than an inhibitor.
Shutting people up in their homes for months on end led to substance abuse and mental health breakdowns. It subjected people to loneliness and fear about their jobs, their health and their economic future.
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Telling people they couldn’t go to church for months on end, even if they could watch services online, contributed to social isolation and spiritual oppression.
All this was inevitably going to lead to people being more angry, more bitter and less concerned about being good citizens.
Now add the racial strife that was encouraged every step of the way by politicians and the media, and the constant attacks on police officers. You had people running wild in the streets, setting fires to other people’s property and sometimes public facilities, and being told by the media that they were engaged in justifiable rage.
(As long as you don’t do it on Capitol Hill. That’s beyond the pale. But a police precinct in Minneapolis? Apparently you can burn that sucker to the ground.)
The atmosphere of lawlessness was largely encouraged by everyone from members of Congress to celebrities to the talking heads on the evening news. It came with the usual wink-nod-stay-peaceful reminders, but none of that matters when you actually destroy someone’s business and the same people defend your actions.
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The United States in 2020 was a force of anger and frustration, fueled by drugs and cheered on by high-profile cultural figures. Is anyone surprised this happened?
Will 2021 get better? Considering that we’ve now reached a point in our culture when it’s OK to publicly attack anyone who doesn’t think like you think, and to demand they lose their jobs and their places in polite society. Is that going to make America a more peaceful place?
The overall impression I take from 2020 is that we didn’t really handle much of this the Jesus way. We didn’t love our neighbors. We didn’t project hope and faith. We were quick to judge and slow to forgive. We’ve lost the ability to disagree without hating, and we’ve decided that grievance-fueled rage and violence are better than peace, love and understanding.
To those of us who understand what this means, we need to pray to God daily for this to get better. And it only gets better when people turn away from all of the above and turn to Him. In the meantime, I’d be careful where you go and when.
