US homicide rate up 30 percent in 2020 | Abroad

76 percent of murders last year were committed with firearms, which is 3 percent more than a year earlier. Houston even registered a 55 percent increase in the number of homicides committed in this way, according to The Washington Post.

Experts have no ready-made explanation for the increase. Some associate it with the pandemic and its destabilizing effects, while others attribute the increase to the consequences of large-scale demonstrations against police brutality or the increase in arms sales.

The federal police have not yet released data for 2021, but preliminary figures from the country’s major cities do not indicate a decline.

In 2020, there were 6.5 homicides per 100,000 population in the United States. In Mexico it was 35, in Brazil 27 and in Russia 8, according to the latest figures from the World Bank.

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