The FBI released their crime stats for 2018 yesterday, and I wanted to go over it and see the murders stats compared to the last few years.
The murder rate declined from 5.3 per 100,000 to 5.0 per 100,000. The numbers changed up because the rate per 100,000 was listed at 5.4 in 2017 when the data was released a couple last year, and the number from 2016 was changed from 5.3 to 5.4. The murder rate for 2018 is the lowest since 2015.
Black people are still overrepresented in murder statistics. When it comes to known murder offenders black people made up 6,318 out of 11,514. That's good for 54.9%. The percentage was 53.3 in 2015, 53.5 in 2016, and 54.2 in 2017. Based on demographic data from the link I have below (which is from July 2017), black people were 7.4 times more likely to commit murder than white people. The demographics shouldn't have changed that much from 2017-18.
Single victim, single offender data is still similar to what it was the past couple years. If anything it looks worse for blacks. Just going by that data 82.3% of white people killed were killed by other white people, while 91.2% of black people killed were killed by other black people. Those are the percentages when you only count those murders in which the race of the offender was known. Regressives have often given similar numbers and used that to argue that murder isn't that much of an issue for black people. What those percentages don't show is that there were 2677 instances of one white person murdering another last year, and 2600 instances where the victim, and offender was black. When you adjust for population black people are 5.5 times more likely to kill each other than white people are to kill each other. According the same data there were 514 instances of a black person killing a white person, and 234 instances of a white person killing a black person. Mainstream media might lead you to believe it's the other way around. Looking at news stories it seems like there are always stories of black people being victimized by white people, and little stories in which it is the other way around. Those stories also get more traction. They lead to trending topics on twitter, and get a lot of mainstream attention. The problem is that the stats consistently show that black people kill white people over 2 times as often as white people kill black people. This year's ratio of 2.20/1 is almost identical to the 2.21/1 in 2015, 2.19/1 in 2016, and 2.18/1 in 2017.
The single victim/single offender data gives a slight difference in terms of how likely a black person is to commit murder. White total offender stats mean black people are 7.4 times more likely to commit murder than white people, single victim/offender data translates into black people being 6 times more likely to commit a murder that would fit into that category. There are a large amount of murders that aren't single victim/offender, and many have unknown offenders or victims. According to this chart https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-4.xls 29.1% of murders have unknown offender or offenders. If you take away those instances with unknown offenders, 69.4% of the instances of homicide are single victim/single offender. So those are part of the why there is that discrepancy.
Links
Murders Per 100,000
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/table-1
Murder Offenders
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls
Single Victim/Single Offender
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls
Demographics
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045218
