In 2009 America's crime rate was roughly the same as in 1968, with the homicide rate being at its lowest level since 1964. Overall, the national crime rate was 3466 crimes per 100,000 residents, down from 3680 crimes per 100,000 residents forty years earlier in 1969 (-9.4%).[1]

The likelihood of committing and falling victim to crime also depends on several demographic characteristics, as well as location of the population. Overall, men, minorities, the young, and those in financially less favorable positions are more likely to be crime victims, as well as commit crimes.[2] Crime in the US is also concentrated in certain areas.

It is quite common for crime in American cities to be highly concentrated in a few, often economically disadvantaged areas. For example, San Mateo County, California had a population of approximately 707,000 and 17 homicides in 2001. Six of these 17 homicides took place in poor, largely Black and Hispanic East Palo Alto, which had a population of roughly 30,000. So, while East Palo Alto accounted for a mere 4.2% of the population, about one-third of the homicides took place there.[3] According to the FBI, in 2008 14,180 people were murdered in America.[4]

As shown in the charts above, reported violent crime nationwide nearly quadrupled between 1960 and its peak in 1991. Property crime more than doubled over the same period. Since 1993, crime has declined steeply. Several theories have been proposed to explain the cause.

One hypothesis suggests a causal link between legalized abortion and the drop in crime during the 1990s.[6]
Another hypothesis suggests reduced lead exposure as the cause; Scholar Mark A.R. Kleiman writes: "Given the decrease in lead exposure among children since the 1980s and the estimated effects of lead on crime, reduced lead exposure could easily explain a very large proportion—certainly more than half—of the crime decrease of the 1994-2004 period. A careful statistical study relating local changes in lead exposure to local crime rates estimates the fraction of the crime decline due to lead reduction as greater than 90 percent. [7]

Prison statistics
Main article: Incarceration in the United States
A map of US states according to number of incarcerated individuals per population of 100,000 in 2008.[17]

Compared with other countries, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As of 2006, a record 7 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole, of which 2.2 million were incarcerated. The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million. The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.[18][dated info]

In terms of federal prison, 57% of those incarcerated were sentenced for drug offenses.

Must be nice. Here the Libtards wanna force their anti gun BS on everyone and it only take guns away from innocent people and puts them in the criminals hands.

What medical reasons do women use birth control for?

I don't make the laws; I just abide by them. I would never keep a gun in my house or on me. I have a better chance of being killed in an accident than of being shot. JMO

I don't make the laws; I just abide by them. I would never keep a gun in my house or on me. I have a better chance of being killed in an accident than of being shot. JMO

my love is unconditional, and not physical

it matters not and is defined not by how close a proximity I keep to the loved or how entertwined our life is,, If I love you, I always love you

even if I dont wish to share a life with you
even if I dont even want to talk to you very often,,,

on the one hand, it would be easier for the justice system to round them up because they would have no 'legal' justification for such a deadly weapon

Because we enjoy the feeling of being in a relationship with someone we love and we have to be there before we know if they love us back....which is the goal of any healthy romantic relationship.

...Or for sex?

Self-protection

Between 1987 and 1990, David McDowall found that guns were used in defense during a crime incident 64,615 times annually.[62] This equates to two times out of 1,000 incidents (0.2%) that occurred in this time frame.[62] For violent crimes (assault, robbery, and rape), guns were used 0.83% of the time in self-defense.[62] Of the times that guns were used in self-defense, 71% of the crimes were committed by strangers, with the rest of the incidents evenly divided between offenders that were acquaintances or persons well-known to the victim.[62] Of all incidents where a gun was used for self-defense, victims shot at the offender 28% of the time.[62] In 20% of the self-defense incidents, the guns were used by police officers.[62] During this same time period, 1987 and 1990, there were 46,319 gun homicides,[63] and the National Crime Victimization Survey estimates that 2,628,532 nonfatal crimes involving guns occurred.[62]

The findings of the McDowall's study for the American Journal of Public Health contrast with the findings of a 1993 study by Gary Kleck, who finds that as many as 2.45 million crimes are thwarted each year in the United States, and in most cases, the potential victim never fires a shot in these cases where firearms are used constructively for self-protection.[64] The results of the Kleck studies have been cited many times in scholarly and popular media.[65][66][67][68][69][70][71]

McDowall cites methodological issues with the Kleck studies, stating that Kleck used a very small sample size and did not confine self-defense to attempted victimizations where physical attacks had already commenced.[62] The former criticism, however, is inaccurate — Kleck's survey with Marc Gertz in fact used the largest sample size of any survey that ever asked respondents about defensive gun use — 4,977 cases, far more than is typical in national surveys.[72] A study of gun use in the 1990s, by David Hemenway at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, found that criminal use of guns is far more common than self-defense use of guns.[73] By the Kleck study, however, most successful preventions of victimizations are accomplished without a shot being fired, which are not counted as a self-defense firearm usage by either the Hemenway or McDowall studies.[62][64][73] Hemenway, however, also argues that the Kleck figure is inconsistent with other known statistics for crime, citing that Kleck's figures apparently show that guns are many times more often used for self-defense in burglaries, than there are incidents of bulgaries of properties containing gun owners with awake occupants.[74] Hemenway concludes that under reasonable assumptions of random errors in sampling, because of the rarity of the event, the 2.5 million figure should be considered only as the top end of a 0-2.5 million confidence interval, suggesting a highly unreliable result that is likely a great overestimate, with the true figure at least 10 times less.

Love is a feeling, not a condemnation, or a contract, or a prison sentence. You can leave a bad person you love.

I am glad I dont know you personally or Id feel compelled to shake you when you say things like this.

There is no guarantee your rapist wont just slit your throat. Stopping someone from attacking you is stopping them from the violent possibility of your death.

msharmony it sounds like you are very lucky women to be alive. It is also clear you are a fatalist.