Violent crime rate nears 50-year low, but GOP won't stop lying about it

Every violent crime is a tragedy. Behind the statistics are real people experiencing injury, trauma, and loss.  However, the great news is that far fewer Americans are personally involved in these tragedies than they were not so long ago, as the rate of violent crime continues to plummet. Despite false claims by Donald Trump that crime has increased under President Joe Biden, PolitiFact confirms that in 2022, the violent crime rate neared a 50-year low.  That’s not all. Preliminary statistics for 2023 indicate the lowest levels of violent crime ever recorded, dropping below previous records in 2014 and 2019. And that’s still not all, because right now it appears that 2024 is still trending down. Americans are safer now than they have been in decades, and the numbers have only gotten better under Biden.  But you won’t hear that from Republicans, or Fox News, or much of the media. Because pushing fear is all they know. There are fewer violent crimes now than there were in 1971 under Richard Nixon, despite a population that has increased by over 100 million people. Today we are experiencing not simply fewer crimes per person, but fewer crimes overall. According to FBI statistics, there were over 5 million fewer violent crimes in the United States last year than in the final full year of Ronald Reagan's “tough on crime” administration. After peaking in 1991 under George H. W. Bush, violent crime has been slowly declining year over year. There have been a few exceptions: Some categories of violent crime, including murder, were up in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic. Even then, those numbers didn’t come close to the levels seen in the 1980s or 1990s. All of this simply blows apart one of the right’s major talking points: racist claims that immigrants are generating a "crime wave."  Trump has been drawing a connection between immigrants and crime ever since he rode down the golden escalator in 2015 to talk about Mexicans being rapists and drug dealers. He’s told bizarre—and false—stories of “taped-up women” being trafficked across the border.  "Women are tied up, they're bound, duct tape put around their faces, around their mouths," Trump said in a 2019 press conference. "In many cases, they can't even breathe. They're put in the backs of cars or vans or trucks." All of this seemed to be generated by some fetish of Trump’s, because as ABC News confirmed, there was no connection with reality. Trump has also spread false claims that people on the terror watch list were rushing to the border after Biden became president. He’s made up endless stories about the gang MS-13, which has roots in Los Angeles’ Salvadoran community, to bolster his claims of a criminal “invasion.” And he’s exploited the unfortunate victims of crime, even lying about speaking to a murder victim's family during a rally speech about “Biden’s border bloodbath.” Trump isn’t alone in this conspiracy of fear. Other Republicans have joined in the howling over this nonexistent immigrant crime wave. "Since Joe Biden took office, crime has skyrocketed across our country," Rep. Nancy Mace wrote in a social media post on March 30. Except it hasn’t.  Since the statistics show that crime is actually going down, Trump has also jumped in with a false attack on FBI crime statistics, adding “fake numbers” to the list of things he can dismiss when they don’t fit his narrative. Fox News has also been leading the charge to undercut the truth by pushing an evidence-free claim from a recently formed right-wing group insisting that America has suddenly developed an issue with counting crimes. Finally, with gun sales declining for three years in a row, firearms manufacturers are also feeding the idea that crime is underreported—because otherwise, how are they going to keep up levels of fear that drive their customers to buy a deadly weapon for “self-defense?” New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban also hyped a "wave of migrant crime" that simply does not exist. But he helpfully provided Republicans with a remark that they have cited often and bolstered the idea that “blue cities” are hotbeds of crime. The truth is that crime is particularly down in large cities, including New York City. Of course, there are some crimes that Republicans fully support. Only 18% of Republicans admit that Jan. 6 insurrectionists were violent and 45% believe punishment of those who fought with police, smashed their way into the Capitol, and tried to capture members of Congress has been too harsh. An eyebrow-raising 86% of Republicans don’t hold Trump to blame for any of it. But then 85% of Republicans don’t believe Trump should be prosecuted for any of the crimes he’s been charged with so far. It turns out Republicans are soft on crime—so long as it’s Republican crime. Attempted insurrections aside, why isn't America reveling in an unprecedented period of personal safety? Because Trump, Republicans, Fox News, gun manufacturers, and a media that has operated for