Based on the reporting in the press, I bet the public has no idea that murders were down under President Trump, compared to President Obama, and murders rose throughout Obama’s term.

After murders rising from 2014 to 2016 under Obama, they leveled off in 2017 after Trump was elected and in 2018 there was a substantial drop.

So why does so much of the reporting make it appear that Trump is causing more violence?

I bet they also have no idea that the murder rate today in the U.S. per 100,000 residents is less than half what it was in the 1990’s despite so many more guns. In 1994 the rate was 9.0 per 100,000 people and in 2014 the rate was down to 4.5 per 100,000 despite there being around 70 million more guns.

Clearly the availability of guns is not causing the murder rate to rise. Many mass murders occur in no gun zones.

Every time there are murders with guns the media, in collusion with other Democrats want more gun laws but somehow when illegal immigrants kill people there is no demand for more laws. In fact, they don’t want existing laws enforced and people who want to enforce the laws Congress passed as their oaths require are called racists and xenophobes.

In 2016, the estimated number of murders in the nation was 17,250. This was an 8.6 percent increase from the 2015 estimate, a 16.1 percent increase from the 2012 figure, and a 0.7 percent rise from the number in 2007.

The murder rate in the United States in 2018 is on track to become the largest one-year drop in five years.

The numbers obviously aren’t final, and the FBI won’t formally report 2018’s murder figures until September 2019.

But based on a comparison of 2017 data and 2018 data for 66 large American cities (population over 250,000), we can observe the trend as it is occurring and offer a reasonable forecast. (The 2018 data I’ve collected are available here).

Murder rose 23 percent nationally between 2014 and 2016 before leveling off in 2017. Major increases in murder in Chicago and Baltimore received much of the national attention, but the increase occurred throughout the country.

A June 2018 report from the Small Arms Survey estimates that American civilians own 393 million guns, both legally and otherwise, out of a worldwide total of 857 million firearms. That’s up from 270 million civilian-owned guns domestically, and 650 million globally, in 2007, the last time the Swiss organization released an estimate.

Its authors calculated that the nation’s firearms stockpile had increased by only 70 million guns since 1994