Listen Live
Walker Funeral Home Black Business Spotlight
100.3 Featured Video
CLOSE

A report by the Violence Policy Center (VPC), a Washington D.C.- based research and advocacy group that promotes gun control, has discovered that the state of Nebraska has the highest black homicide victimization in the country. The study’s numbers were accumulated to highlight the effects gun violence has on African American teens and adults.

The VPC released its rankings in its annual report, “Black Homicide Victimization in the United States.” It noted that this trend is a public health crisis in America.

“This report should be a wake-up call for our elected officials to address the disproportionately high homicide victimization rate among black men and women,” said VPC executive director Josh Sugarmann.  “The longer we wait to act, the more lives will be lost.  This is not an abstract concept.  This is real people’s lives.”

Omaha, the state’s largest city, accounted for almost half of the state’s homicides. It also had the highest incidence of black murder victims in the United States. Omaha police have estimated that at least one-half of all killings in the city are gang-related.  “It’s Vietnam around this block,” Larry Davis, a 50-year-old north Omaha resident told the Omaha World-Herald newspaper.  “These guys with these guns, they just don’t have a value for life.”

According to the 2012 U.S. Census Data, two-third’s of black people in Nebraska reside in Omaha, while an eighth of the people live in Lincoln (the capital city of Nebraska).

The United States has had a black homicide rate of 17.51 per 100,000 people. Nebraska’s black homicide rate was at 34.43 per 100,000 people with nine out of ten victims killed by gun violence, which makes Nebraska’s rate nearly double that of the national homicide rate for blacks.

The states with the next four highest black homicide rates were Missouri, Michigan, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

(Photo: AP)

What State Has the Highest Black Homicide Rates? You’ll Be Surprised  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com