Last year 20,500 Americans were murdered, which is well over twice the number murdered in 1965, just nine years before! At this rate of increase there will be over 40,000 killings a year by the early 1980’s. Thus, in the 1980’s it may take only six or seven years for U.S murder victims to outnumber the 292,131 American combat deaths in World War II!

It is noteworthy, too, that murders commonly occur during vacation periods, such as at Christmastime. Also, in a study of 588 murders in Philadelphia, sociologist Martin Wolfgang found that about two thirds of the victims had been killed on weekends.

The shocking conclusion of the Census Bureau survey is: 37 million serious crimes a year are being committed in the United States, more than three times the number reported. This amounts to seventy murders, rapes, assaults or various types of theft every minute, more than one a second!

NO CITY has as much total crime as New York city. More people​—1,669—​were murdered here in a recent year than have been killed in almost seven years of fighting in northern Ireland!

Hundreds of New Yorkers daily are either murdered, assaulted, raped or robbed​—a serious crime is reported almost every minute. A New York Times headline, reporting the crime increase of the early months of 1975 over the same months of 1974, reads: “SERIOUS CRIMES UP 21.3% IN THE CITY.”