In fact, one of the most unremarked-upon developments of the past two decades is a massive, nation-wide reduction in violent crime, especially gun-related violent crime. In 1993, according to Pew Research figures, there were seven gun homicides per 100,000 people. In 2014, the latest year for which there is full data, the rate was 3.4 percent, a decline of nearly 50 percent. “Nonfatal violent firearm crime victimizations dropped even over the same time frame, from 725 per 100,000 to 175 per 100,000.
The result of such a decline is that crime is no longer an issue in national politics the way it was from at least the mid-1960s through the mid-1990s. In the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon capitalized on rising crime rates, riots, and anti-war protests by running commercials that promised an end to “domestic violence” and that “the wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future in America.” George Wallace similarly pledged to “make it possible for you and your families to walk the streets of our cities in safety.” Such appeals continued for decades, through the infamous Willie Horton ad in 1988 and Bill Clinton’s 1992 spot bragging that he and Al Gore “sent a strong signal to criminals by supporting the death penalty.”
By the mid-1990s—at the exact moment most criminologists (including Fox) predicted a historic surge in lawlessness by “super-predators”—crime was off the table as an issue.
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