The Decline in Murder Is Clear. The Reason Is Not

“Every single number is the lowest number in recorded history,” President Donald Trump said while unveiling the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2025 US crime report last week. It may not be surprising to learn that this was false: Despite falling sharply in 2025, the population-adjusted rate of aggravated assaults — one of the four main violent crimes tracked by the FBI — was still higher than in the early 2010s. So was the rate of rapes, albeit mainly because of definitional changes made in 2