Crime is becoming one of America's biggest political issues

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Violent crime is up. Violent crime and murder rates are certainly up around the country compared to recent years (crime, more generally, is often down). The FBI should release final data for 2020 in the fall, although this year it has changed the way it collects data on violent crime, so it will be difficult to compare year over year. Murder rates, already creeping up from a low of 4.4 murders per 100,000 people in 2014, certainly increased during and now after the pandemic.

The national murder rate of around five murders per 100,000 people in 2019 -- is about half its all time recorded high in 1980, when more than 10 Americans for every 100,000 were murdered. Covid, by comparison, has killed more than 183 Americans per 100,000 people, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.