Before and After the 2020 Homicide Spike
In 2020, the homicide rate spiked by its largest margin in recorded history. The FBI estimated an increase of 27%; the CDC recorded 5,434 excess deaths due to assault in 2020 as compared to 2019, suggesting a nearly 29% annual increase. After decades of low and declining crime rates, the sudden spike in violence was alarming.
The surge in homicide victims was quickly attributed to the (other) unprecedented events of 2020. In particular, the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent summer of anti-police brutality protests was perceived to degrade the ability of the police to prevent crime. By this account, June of 2020 marked a turning point in homicide trends.[1]
However, as early as May of 2020, the homicide rate was already at its highest point in decades. From January through May, there were 8,561 homicides recorded by the CDC - the highest such number from 1999 through 2020, outpacing the next closest year (2017) by 832 deaths. In fact, the homicide rate recorded from January through May of 2020 was more than two standard deviations higher than mean of from 1999 to 2019 – which could be referred to as higher by “statistically significant” margin.[2]
If 2020 was already on pace to be the most violent year of the 21st Century prior to the nationwide George Floyd protests – our explanation of this violent year cannot completely hinge on changes in policing. In fact, a recent study examining weekly homicide victimization suggested that the homicide rate was already abnormally high by October of 2019.[3] Not only does this suggest that the protests occurred after the uptick in homicide, but that violence was on an upward trajectory prior to COVID-19-related disruptions of 2020.
As I address in my forthcoming book Crime Wave: The American Homicide Epidemic,[4] 2020 was just one year of more than a half decade of intermittently increasing homicide rates. While crime trends in 2020 were certainly notable, the increasing rate of homicide can be traced back to 2015. If we zoom out a bit from the summer of 2020, it is apparent that not only was homicide escalating in pre-George Floyd era, but was already more than 18% higher than its lowest point (2014) by 2019. And, even as the lockdowns and protests waned, homicide rates continued to increase in 2021 – with June of 2021 recording more homicides than the protest-plagued June of 2020.
What Caused the Spike in Homicide?
While policing, or a lack thereof, may have contributed to some of crime trends noted in 2020,[5] it is a poor explanation of the overall trend. Not only do the patterns in homicide not fit with the conventional narrative of only exhibiting a post-George Floyd spike, but it cannot explain other oddities in crime patterns. Namely, rates of robbery, burglary, and larceny have plummeted during the past decade. Why would a lack of deterrence only contribute to a spike in homicide while overall trends in crime remain largely stagnant?
Given the homicide-specific increase, we would likely need to explain the homicide-specific explanation. Instead, we should look to factors that would specifically contribute to lethal violent assaults. Some dramatic trends both before and during 2020 provide us with a few clues.
Guns
Let’s begin with the manner by which homicides are increasingly committed – using a gun. Guns have long played an outsized role as murder weapons, but gun violence has never accounted for a larger proportion of homicides than it did in the early 2020s. In 2020, firearm sales spiked by the highest margin since we began recording (1998).[6] Both firearm sales and the percentage of homicides in which a firearm was the weapon of choice had been increasing over the past decade. This trend continued to escalate into early 2021, with a recording-breaking monthly rate of firearm sales in January and March – which corresponded with a new all-time high of 81% of homicides committed using a firearm. Prior to the recent upward trend in gun-enabled assaults during the 2010s, only about 65% of homicides were carried out with a firearm as estimated by the CDC.
Access to guns, and especially handguns, has expanded in recent years. With more guns on hand, people were able to carry out deadly assaults at a rapidly escalating rate. But why? While access to a gun might make you more capable of murder, it is not in itself a motivation to kill. For that, we need to turn to America’s out-of-control drug crisis.
Drugs
The opioid crisis is one of the deadliest public health disasters in American history. Spanning for more than 20 years, more than half a million people have lost their lives to opioid overdose. For the past decade of this crisis, fentanyl-related deaths have been largely responsible.
Underground markets facilitating the drug trade provided ample motivation for violent retribution. As dealers competed for market share and drug buyers and sellers ripped each other off, shootings escalated.
During the early years of the opioid crisis (circa 2000-2012), there was little apparent impact on the homicide rate. Most of the drug crisis during this time was the driven by prescription drugs. While some people did sell these on secondary markets, the quasi-legal nature of drug sales during this era reduced violence often associated with illegal drug use.
As the government cracked down on prescription pills, illicit opioids filled the void. Fentanyl overdoses escalated from 2015 onward, spiking by a record margin in 2020 – largely mirrored by homicide trends. As drug abuse patterns shifted from rural areas to urban centers, drug dealers used hand guns to enforce their “business deals,” fight for market share, and enforce discipline. A growing illicit drug market, coupled with more access to handguns, contributed to more shooting deaths over the past decade.
Alcohol
Another element of America’s problem with substance abuse was increasing alcohol consumption. As highlighted by Anne Case and Angus Deaton[7] in their conceptualization of “deaths of despair” – rates of suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related deaths had been trending upward during the early 21st Century – largely concentrated among people lacking a college degree. During the mid-to-late 2010s, both the drug and alcohol-related death trends accelerated, as a rapidly increasing number of people succumbed to their addictions.
Alcohol has long been known as a contributor of violent behavior. The prohibition of alcohol by the 18th Amendment was partially motivated by the violence enacted by men under the influence of beer and liquor. Research examining historical trends in alcohol-related deaths has also found a fairly consistent association with homicide.[8]
Alcohol consumption accelerated during the mid-2010s and peaked in 2021. Although likely not as important as drugs and guns, alcohol consumption patterns were closely mirrored by trends in homicide victimization over the past decade.
The Homicide Decline
Since 2021, the homicide rate has declined. Because the homicide trend from 2015 to 2021 was largely a historical anomaly, moving in the opposite direction of general crime trends, it began to decline as soon as these homicide-specific factors were no longer rapidly trending upward.
The trends depicted in the figure examine the standardized (Z-score) trends in homicide rates, firearm purchases, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related deaths from 2010 to 2024.[9] Generally, increases in all four trends accelerated from 2014 to 2016/2017, stagnated in 2018 and 2019 and then rapidly increased in 2020 and 2021. During the past three years, partial and preliminary data suggest that all of these trends are all now rapidly declining.
Firearm sales declined during the second half of 2021, then fell sharper in 2022, continued to decline in 2023, and were even lower in 2024. The drug overdose trend largely plateaued in 2022 and 2023, falling sharply in the preliminary data for 2024.[10] Alcohol consumption peaked in 2021, with both sales and alcohol-related deaths falling in 2022 and 2023. Initial alcohol sales data also show a further decline in consumption in 2024.[11] The accelerating decline of drug overdoses and alcohol consumption in 2024 just so happens to have aligned with steep homicide decline during 2024.[12]
As we zoom out from 2020, we can see that the proliferation of guns, illicit drugs, and alcohol contributed to the rise and fall of homicide rates. As these vices have declined since 2021 – so too has the homicide rate. Annual homicide trends are unpredictable to some degree, but expect further declines in 2025 if gun sales, drug abuse, and alcohol consumption patterns continue.
[1] Lopez, E., & R. Rosenfeld. (2021). Crime, quarantine, and the U.S. coronavirus pandemic. Criminology & Public Policy, 20(3), 401-422.
[2] Centers for Disease Control. “CDC Wonder.” https://wonder.cdc.gov/.
[3] Degli Esposti M., T. L.Schell, R. Smart. (2025). “The recent rise in homicide: An analysis of weekly mortality data, United States, 2018-2022.” Epidemiology, 36(2):174-182.
[4] Available at: https://nyupress.org/9781479831166/crime-wave/
[5] Nix, J., Huff, J., Wolfe, S. E., Pyrooz, D. C., Mourtgos, S. M. (2024). “When police pull back: Neighborhood-level effects of de-policing on violence and property crime, a research note.” Criminology, 62(1), 156-171.
[6] Federal Bureau of Investigation. “NICS Firearm Checks: Month/Year.” https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/nics_firearm_checks_-_month_year.pdf/view
[7] Case, A., & A. Deaton. (2020). Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Princeton University Press.
[8] Jensen, G.F. (2000). “Prohibition, alcohol, and murder: Untangling countervailing mechanisms.” Homicide Studies, 4(1), 18-36.
[9] Note that the trends for 2023 and 2024 are based upon preliminary and extrapolated data. The homicide, drug, and alcohol data are derived from the CDC and the firearm purchases data are based on the FBI’s NICS data.
[10] National Center for Health Statistics. “Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts.” https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm
[11] SASMA. “Q4 Market Updates: Spirits Market” https://blog.sasmabv.com/q4-spirits-market-update
[12] Lopez, E., & B. Boxerman. (2025). “Crime Trends in U.S. Cities: Year-End 2024 Update.” Council on Criminal Justice. https://counciloncj.org/crime-trends-in-u-s-cities-year-end-2024-update/