Murder rate climbed 29% in 2020, amid gun stockpiling and pandemic pressures
CBSN
Murders rose nearly 30% nationwide last year, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Report data released Monday, which revealed the greatest percentage of homicides involving guns on record, amid the pandemic's onset.
Homicides and manslaughter jumped 29.4% from 2019 to 2020, the largest year-to-year spike since the federal government began tracking violent crime in the 1960s. Though well below the peak of U.S. killings in the 1980s and early 1990s, 4,901 additional killings were carried out in 2020, compared to 2019.
The FBI tabulated more than 21,500 murders last year – a wave that largely corresponds with the coronavirus pandemic's 18-month course and amounts to about 6.5 per 100,000 people.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.