“Last year, the United States had one of the lowest rates of all violent crime — of all violent crimes in more than 50 years. Murder, rape — murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery all dropped sharply, along with burglary, property crime, and theft,” Biden recently proclaimed at a White House law enforcement event.
And then he claimed credit for it.
The original source for the claim that the United States had the lowest crime rate in 50 years came from the substack blog of Jeff Asher, a 30-something former federal employee who set up his own consulting and analytics firm that helps create “a more equitable criminal justice system” which is a term often used for the pro-crime policies that led to the high crime rates.
Asher had popped up in pro-crime media outlets back in 2020 to dismiss the idea that pro-crime policies had caused a surge in violent crime. In one op-ed, Asher blamed, “increased domestic violence early in the pandemic, warmer weather, or just plain randomness”. Now Asher is back and arguing that we’re enjoying “the lowest violent crime rate nationally since 1969.”
Forget 1969. The FBI recorded 16,214 murders in 2018. While a story about Asher and his firm says that they expect “homicides overall to fall from 21,156 last year to around 18,450 this year.”
Asher admits that, “murder was almost certainly still higher in 2023 than in 2019 even with a record double-digit decline nationally this year, but not by much.”
Biden is bragging about the “lowest crime rate in 50 years” that includes thousands more murders than not all that long ago under Trump.
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