That's according to the Violence Policy Center, a national group that looked at FBI crime statistics from 2007, the most recent available. Missouri had 235 black homicide victims that year, which translates to 34.82 homicides per 100,000 black residents.
Pennsylvania was the only state that had a higher rate. And please note -- the VPC looked at rates, not the number of homicide cases.
You might be asking: Why are they focusing on black homicides? The center, which studies gun violence, says that homicides tend to affect the black community at a much higher rate than the rest of society -- but that most people aren't paying attention. They use "epidemic" to describe the problem, which especially affects young men. That's certainly been true in Kansas City -- in 2008, about 75 percent of homicide victims were African-American.
From the VPC report:According to the FBI SHR data, in 2007 there were 7,387 black homicide victims in the United States. The homicide rate among black victims in the United States was 20.86 per 100,000. For that year, the overall national homicide rate was 5.30 per 100,000. For whites, the national homicide rate was 3.11 per 100,000.
