FBI Releases 2004 Crime Data

On October 18th the FBI released the final “crime” data collected in 2004. There is a lot of good news to share and a little bad. In 2004 the murder rate in our country fell by 3% which hasn’t happened since 2000. Gun related deaths fell 4.4%. The rate of “crime” is presented as a “whole”, but from August to December the “murder rate” dropped by 14 percent!

The rate of murder and robbery fell by 3% and 4%. The bad news is, that in the area of crime that we want to zoom in on: rape and aggravated assault, rates fell by only 0.2% and 1.5%. Ladies had still better keep the pepper spray and maybe a good personal alarm handy. It puzzles me that crime rates can be falling, and falling dramatically, in the most violent areas such as murder, but not in rape crimes. The crime rate is down 3% on the whole last year, but rape is only down 0.2 percent. This prompts one to encourage women to remember that they are still the prime criminal targets that they’ve always been. Stay alert and aware of your surroundings ladies!

If you’d like a good read on the FBI’s release of crime data with an interesting twist, check out this page. The columnist weaves the recent expiration of the “ban on assault weapons” law into the crime data, attempting to show that states allowing assault weapons (43), are doing better than the (7) states that have their own assault weapons laws in place. Some very interesting stuff!