3. St. Louis
There is a reason why this city is on several lists of the most dangerous cities in the US. St. Louis, Missouri, had the highest murder rate in the nation in 2019 and most certainly will continue to do so with a rate of about 65 per 100,000 citizens. That’s a little over a 1/10,000 probability of being murdered in St. Louis, just doing the arithmetic, which is better than the odds of winning the lotto. In contrast, there is a 1/40 million chance that you will ever experience a lightning strike, and that figure only accounts for the 20 or so fatalities caused by lightning strikes each year. Several more are hit and make it out alive.
Youth involvement in criminal activity and the epidemic of gun violence are major problems in St. Louis. A significant factor in St. Louis’s total crime rates is the widespread availability of firearms and the lack of effective gun control laws. Over the course of the past year, St. Louis officials have passed one board bill to regulate the open carry of firearms and are currently working on another to outlaw it entirely. The leaders of the Missouri GOP have opposed these measures. To address an increase in juvenile crime in the St. Louis metro area, police are taking several measures.
