Congratulations, Americans! We Are All Far Less Likely To Get Murdered Than We Were Last Year

But also don't eat any oysters for a hot minute, okay?

Here’s some nice news — according to an FBI report released on Monday, pretty much all of the crime is going down from last year, which also went down from the year before that.

According to the report, a “comparison of data from agencies that voluntarily submitted at least two or more common months of data for January through March 2023 and 2024 indicates reported violent crime decreased by 15.2 percent. Murder decreased by 26.4 percent, rape decreased by 25.7 percent, robbery decreased by 17.8 percent, and aggravated assault decreased by 12.5 percent. Reported property crime also decreased by 15.1 percent.”

Isn’t that nice? I know that I, for one, am a very big fan of not getting murdered, which is why I adamantly refuse to have a smile that lights up a room and also will never date anyone with the last name “Peterson.”

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It’s worth noting that not every crime categorized as a “violent crime” actually involves any violence or injury. For instance, in many states “purse snatching” is considered a violent crime, as are some drug crimes and other crimes that you might not necessarily think of as being the same thing as stabbing someone or punching them in the face. In most cases, this is a very bad thing because it can unfairly impact sentencing and parole, and because it makes everyone feel more scared than they ought to be.

Of course, some people want people to be scared. Those people are largely Republicans who really have nothing else to run on other than being mad about LGBTQ+ people and non-Christians existing, lowering taxes on the rich, muh guns, and pretending like machismo and overly harsh sentencing will totally protect them all from crime.

May I point out, however, that, statistically, for the last 60 years — with the notable exceptions of a large spike in 1980 while Jimmy Carter was president and the COVID-related spike under Biden — the murder rate has been higher under Republican presidencies (that article is from 2013, but crime did increase under Trump from the Obama era).

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There is, however, also some bad news this week, re: our personal wellbeing. While you may be less likely to be murdered by another human being than last year, you are more likely, at this particular time, to be poisoned by an oyster. The FDA has issued a warning to not eat any oysters or bay clams from Netarts Bay and Tillamook Bay, Oregon, harvested between May 26 and May 30, as they may be “contaminated with paralytic shellfish toxins.” The questionable oysters were shipped to Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New York, Oregon and Washington — but I’m going to err on the safe side and just avoid them myself for a minute because that sounds like a really bad time and I don’t know (or trust!) how accurate they can really be with those things.