U.S. — The United States is projected to achieve its lowest murder rate on record in 2026, according to crime data analyst Jeff Asher. Data collected by Asher's site, The Crime Index, indicates an 18.7% decrease in murders during the first four months of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025.

Asher, who gathers early data from approximately 600 police agencies for The Crime Index, published his prediction in late May 2026. "The United States almost certainly had the lowest murder rate ever recorded in 2025, with the FBI having data back to 1960," Asher said. "And the available evidence suggests that we're going to go even lower this year."

While the FBI's records date back to the 1950s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains homicide rate records from around 1930. "They [the CDC] have good homicide data back to 1930 or so, and there's a few years in the 1950s that were slightly lower than 2025," Asher said. The Crime Index also reported a 6.4% drop in all violent crime during the first four months of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025.

Local data from King County, Washington, supports a decreasing trend. The King County prosecuting attorney's office recorded 204 "shots fired" incidents and nine people killed in the first quarter of 2026. Gary Ernsdorff, who supervises the Special Operations Unit in the King County prosecutor's office, said, "We're still having gang violence. We're still having drive-by shootings. We're still having armed robberies." However, he noted, "But the numbers across the board in each one of those categories seem to be decreasing."

LaMaria Pope, an employee of Choose 180, a violence-prevention nonprofit in the Seattle area, said the current situation is better than it was four years ago. "There was a lot of guns floating around," Pope said. "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." She added, "We have a better way to connect and make an influence on our young people." However, Pope stressed that the fight against crime is not over. "But we're still fighting that fight. It is not over," she said.

Asher also noted that even with a record-low rate, the U.S. is still dealing with significant numbers. "We're still talking about 13- or 14-thousand murders," Asher said. "This is not a solved problem."

Why It Matters

The projected record-low murder rate in the U.S. for 2026, following a low in 2025, represents a reversal of previous trends seen in 2021 when the national murder rate reached 6.8 deaths per 100,000, a 54% increase from the 2014 rate. This overall decline in murders and other violent crimes indicates a shift in crime patterns across the country. However, some local jurisdictions continue to address specific crime issues, and the projected record-low U.S. rate would still be considerably higher than some other developed nations, such as Canada's rate of 1.9 per 100,000.