Last week, Reason's Billy Binion reported on some undersung good news: American murder rates are falling fast. This year could end up being the least violent year on record.
This is, of course, a welcome development by itself. It's an especially laudatory trend, coming as it does on the heels of a massive murder spike during the pandemic, when homicides rose by 30 percent in the average U.S. city.
The COVID crime wave is well understood by now. The all-cause rise in mortality during the pandemic is a little less appreciated. No matter how you slice it, America during COVID was a sicker, deadlier, more dangerous, and generally more dysfunctional place.
