In what may seem like a "duh" conclusion, a nonprofit research organization found that more than half of the murders in America take place in only 2 percent of its counties.

The study by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that 54 percent of the U.S. counties in 2014, the most recent year with complete figures, had zero murders.

In fact, 70 percent of the counties had only 4 percent of the murders.

It isn't until you get to the last 5 percent of the counties that the deaths pile up. Those counties had a full 68 percent of the homicides.

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The study's map shows dark splotches of homicide outbreaks throughout Southern California, with concentrations of violence in Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, several cities in Texas and large swaths of Florida.

The report released this week said the United States can be divided into three types of places regarding homicide: "Places where there are no murders, places where there are a few murders, and places where murders are very common."

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In 2014, the report said, 54 percent of the counties, with 11 percent of the population, had no murders. Sixty-nine percent of counties, with 20 percent of the population, had no more than one murder.

But the worst 1 percent of counties, with 19 percent of the population, had 37 percent of the murders. The worst 5 percent of counties contained 47 percent of the population and accounted for 68 percent of murders.

Believe it or not, the report said, the violence has been spreading.

"Murders actually used to be even more concentrated. From 1977 to 2000, on average 73 percent of counties in any give[n] year had zero murders," the report found. The researchers said the change is possibly due to the opioid epidemic's spread to more rural areas.

Remarkably, they pointed out, if the 1 percent of the counties with the worst number of murders somehow were to become a separate country, the murder rate in the rest of the U.S. would have been only 3.4 in 2014.

"The worst 2 percent or 5 percent would have reduced the U.S. rate to just 3.06 or 2.56 per 100,000, respectively," the report said.

One of the murder hot spots, Baltimore, is recognizing the problem.

A report published Wednesday said the mayor is asking the FBI for help, as the number of murders this year already has soared past 100.

"Murder is out of control," Mayor Catherine Pugh said at her news briefing. "There are too many guns on the streets."

Three people were murdered just on Monday in the city.

City spokesman Anthony McCarthy said the mayor recently asked the FBI for more help for local police in their war against violent crime.

The Centers for Disease Control said for 2014 there were 15,809 homicides in the U.S., and a report from NeighborhoodScout Crime Analytics listed the top 30 murder cities in the U.S. as East St. Louis, Illinois; Chester, Pennsylvania.; St. Louis, Missouri.; Baltimore; Petersburg, Virginia; Flint, Michigan; Detroit; New Orleans; Camden, New Jersey; Wilmington, Delaware; Birmingham, Alabama; Newark, New Jersey; Monroe, Louisiana; Portsmouth, Virginia; Cleveland; Jackson, Mississippi; Riviera Beach, Florida; Youngstown, Ohio; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Bessemer, Alabama; Banning, California; Hartford, Connecticut; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Salinas, California; Goldsboro, North Carolina; Desert Hot Springs, California; East Chicago, Indiana; Milwaukee and Washington, D.C.

The report said one in 30 people in East St. Louis, Illinois, was victimized, compared to the state rate of one in 261.

The Economist reported just weeks ago: "Over the past two years American has become more murderous. After steadily falling for a quarter-century, the national homicide rate jumped by 11 percent in 2015. Last year, an escalation of gang violence in Chicago increased the number of killings there from 485 to 764."

The Economist noted President Trump has threatened to "send in the feds" if Chicago doesn't '"fix the horrible carnage."

The British magazine assessed that the worst 50 cities contain 15 percent of the country's population "and around 37 percent of its murder victims."

Further, the murder rates surged in some neighborhoods in those worst areas, the report said.

The CPRC report said: "When you look at individual counties with a high number of murders, you find large areas with few murders. Take Los Angeles County, with 526 murders in 2014, the most of any county in the U.S.

"The county has virtually no murders in the northwestern part of the county. There was only one murder each in Beverly Hills, Hawthorne, and Van Nuys. Clearly, different parts of the county face very different risks of murder."

The report pointed out that in areas where the homicide rate is zero, or very close, the household gun ownership rate is 2.11 times greater than in urban areas.

"One should not put much weight on this purely 'cross-sectional' evidence over one point in time, but it is still interesting to note that so much of the country has both very high gun ownership rates and zero murders."

WND further has reported that an analysis of an August 2016 study shows that sanctuary cities, which protect illegal aliens from federal law-enforcement, have higher crime rates than similar cities that comply with federal immigration authorities.

The study, published last fall by researchers from the University of California-Riverside and Highline College in Des Moines, Washington, is frequently cited by proponents of sanctuary cities who ignore or downplay one important detail – the actual crime statistics of the carefully selected cities chosen for the comparison model.

An analysis of the data by WND reveals that non-sanctuary cities comparable in population, size and demographics consistently – year over year – report lower percentages of violent crime as well as lower percentages of property crimes.

The authors of the study, researchers Loren Collingwood, Benjamin Gonzalez-O'Brien and Stephen El-Khatib, define a sanctuary city as "a city or police department that has passed a resolution or ordinance expressly forbidding city or law enforcement officials from inquiring into immigration status and/or cooperation with ICE."

The authors admit their assumptions going into the study were that differences in crime rates would be negligible. And that's what they concluded.

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However, their report buries the actual statistics. The statistics show, from 2000 through 2014, sanctuary cities have had higher crime rates than non-sanctuary cities, with the disparity growing over time.

CPRC has research and education programs focusing on the relationship between ownership or access to guns, and crime and public safety.

It does not take donations from gun or ammunition makers or groups such as the NRA.

It was founded by John R. Lott Jr., an economist and a world recognized expert on guns and crime.