What are the odds of being murdered in the US?
Evidence quality 5.0/5
Eight-dimension review score against the quality rubric . Each dimension scored 1–5.
- D1 Source grounding
- 5/5
- D2 Source authority
- 5/5
- D3 Arithmetic
- 5/5
- D4 Uncertainty
- 5/5
- D5 Scope
- 5/5
- D6 Prose
- 5/5
- D7 Perception honesty
- 5/5
- D8 Caveat completeness
- 5/5
Lifetime probability · lifetime, US adult
1 in 287
0.3% lifetime chance
range 1 in 376 to 1 in 218
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≈ As likely as
Perceived
Gallup's annual crime-worry poll asks Americans how frequently they worry about a list of specific crimes happening to them. In the October 2025 wave, 22% of US adults said they worry "frequently" or "occasionally" about being murdered. That places homicide roughly in the middle of the crime-worry list — below property crimes, above sexual assault — and is broadly stable year-over-year even as measured rates move.
Rough estimate: ~1 in 100 lifetime feels about right to many respondents
Source: Gallup (2025) — Crime in U.S. Seen as Less Serious for Second Straight Year
Actual
~5.9 per 100,000 per year
US residents, all ages and demographics pooled
Show derivation
Assumes the 2023–2024 pooled US homicide rate of ~5.9 per 100,000 per year (CDC NVSS and BJS agree to the first decimal), 59 years of remaining adult life, and constant annual hazard. Compounded: 1 − (1 − 0.000059)^59 ≈ 0.00348. This is a population average that pools across age, sex, race, and geography; see caveats.
Caveats: This is the single field where a pooled average is most misleading. The US homic…
This is the single field where a pooled average is most misleading. The US homicide rate varies by more than an order of magnitude across demographics: BJS reports the male rate at 9.3 per 100,000 versus 2.6 for females, and the rate for Black Americans at 21.3 versus 3.2 for white Americans. Age is just as skewed — homicide victimization peaks sharply in the 15–34 band and falls off steeply at both ends. Geography compounds all of this: county-level rates span roughly two orders of magnitude, with a small number of census tracts accounting for a disproportionate share of incidents. The "1 in 287" pooled figure is the right answer to "what is the US average?" and the wrong answer to "what is *my* risk?" for almost every individual reader.
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The population-level numbers on US homicide are unusually well-agreed: CDC’s death-certificate system and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ law-enforcement pipeline both put the recent rate at about 5.9 homicide deaths per 100,000 residents per year. Compounded naively over a 59-year remaining adult lifetime, that works out to roughly 1 in 287. For context, that is about 30× higher than the lifetime odds of dying in a plane crash, and about 3× lower than the lifetime odds of dying in a car crash.
What is interesting about homicide-worry is that Americans consistently overstate their personal risk while understating the variance in that risk. Gallup’s annual tracker has about 22% of US adults saying they worry frequently or occasionally about being murdered, a number that barely moves even when the actual rate swings by 30% between years. The US does sit roughly 5–7× above the per-capita homicide rate of other high-income countries, so the elevated baseline concern is not irrational. But the people who worry most are often those whose demographic and geographic profile put them well below the national average.
The heterogeneity is the whole story. The male rate is 3.5× the female rate. The rate for Black Americans is more than 6× the rate for white Americans. Homicide victimization peaks in the 15–34 age band and is concentrated in a small fraction of census tracts. A 55-year-old white woman in a low-crime suburb and an 18-year-old Black man in a high-crime urban block are both “US residents” averaged into the same 5.9 per 100,000 number, but their actual annual risks differ by more than a factor of fifty. The pooled figure above is a population accounting identity. It is not a personal forecast, and it should not be read as one.
Related tidbits
Dying of an accidental drug overdose is about 7× more likely than being murdered over a US adult lifetime (~1 in 42 vs ~1 in 290). Overdose surpassed homicide nationally in the late 2010s and stayed there.
Accidental falls kill roughly 44,000 Americans per year. Homicide kills about 26,000. Falls are the deadlier threat by a wide margin, but no one checks over their shoulder on the stairs.
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
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[1] CDC National Center for Health Statistics — FastStats — Assault or Homicide
FastStats — Assault or Homicide- Statistic
20,162 homicide deaths in the US in 2024; rate of 5.9 per 100,000- Excerpt
“"Number of deaths: 20,162. Deaths per 100,000 population: 5.9. Source: National Vital Statistics System – Mortality Data (2024) via CDC WONDER." ”
- Source data from
- 2024-12-31
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- CDC NVSS counts homicides from death certificates coded as assault (ICD-10 X85–Y09, Y87.1). Annual rate 5.9 / 100,000 = 0.000059 per person-year. Lifetime over 59 adult years: 1 − (1 − 0.000059)^59 ≈ 0.00348 ≈ 1 in 287. Uncertainty band reflects the 2014–2021 US range (~4.5 to ~7.8 per 100,000), which is the realistic envelope over a 59-year horizon rather than a statistical sampling error.
- Independence
- CDC NVSS is derived from death certificates filed by medical examiners and coroners; BJS/FBI numbers come from law-enforcement incident reports. They count meaningfully differently and serve as independent checks on each other.
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[2] US Bureau of Justice Statistics — Homicide Victimization in the United States, 2023
Homicide Victimization in the United States, 2023- Statistic
US homicide victimization rate 5.9 per 100,000 in 2023; male rate 9.3 vs female 2.6; Black rate 21.3 vs white 3.2- Excerpt
“"The rate of homicide victimization was 5.9 per 100,000 persons. The male homicide victimization rate (9.3 per 100,000 persons) was 3.5 times greater than the homicide victimization rate for females (2.6 per 100,000). The homicide victimization rate for black persons (21.3 per 100,000 persons) was more than 6 times the rate for white persons (3.2 per 100,000)." ”
- Source data from
- 2025-07-10
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- BJS computes victimization rates from FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports / NIBRS. Their 2023 rate of 5.9 per 100,000 matches CDC's 2024 figure to the first decimal, giving us a robust central estimate. The demographic breakdowns feed directly into the heterogeneity caveat: a factor-of-~7 spread across race and ~3.5 across sex means the pooled average is the wrong number for any specific reader.
- Independence
- FBI/BJS law-enforcement incident data and CDC/NVSS death-certificate data are collected through entirely different pipelines by different federal agencies. Agreement to the first decimal is strong corroboration, not circular.
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[3] Gallup — Crime in U.S. Seen as Less Serious for Second Straight Year
Crime in U.S. Seen as Less Serious for Second Straight YearSee all 6 Likelier entries citing this source →
- Statistic
22% of US adults worry frequently or occasionally about being murdered (October 2025)- Excerpt
“"Fewer Americans say they worry about crimes, such as having a car stolen (39%) or their home burglarized (34%), being a victim of a hate crime (30%), or getting mugged (29%), attacked while driving (27%), murdered (22%) or sexually assaulted (21%)." ”
- Source data from
- 2025-10-30
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- Used for the perceived-risk side only. The 22% figure is the fraction of respondents reporting frequent-or-occasional worry, not an elicited probability. There is no direct conversion to a subjective lifetime probability, but it is the best time-series instrument for tracking US homicide-worry at the national level.
- Independence
- Gallup conducts an independent annual telephone/web survey; methodologically independent of both CDC vital-statistics and BJS victimization data.