> 3/4 of homicides were committed by acquaintances, neighbors,
> family members, intimate partners.
First of all, I think you mean "murder" or "nonnegligent manslaughter" ... homicide includes, for instance, suicide: and suicide is over half of all homicide. But anyway, as for murder: let's see how this really breaks down. For 2002, there were an estimated 16,204 murders. For various reasons, we only have UCR data for 14,054 of them:
Total 14,054 Husband 133 Wife 601 Mother 113 Father 110 Son 239 Daughter 210 Brother 87 Sister 20 Other Family 271 Acquaintance 3,217 Friend 352 Boyfriend 154 Girlfriend 444 Neighbor 110 Employee 5 Employer 10 Stranger 1,963 Unknown 6,015
Right away you can see that 56% are "stranger or unknown" so there's no way that 3/4 are these others. The next big piece ("acquaintance") is pretty guarded: it's not your friend, it's not your boyfriend ... it's not even someone you work with or live near. Who is it?
Yes: it's your drug dealer, someone you deal drugs to, or someone in a rival gang.
In this case, "acquaintance" is someone who basically ISN'T your neighbors, family members, intimate partners" ... Now we're up to ... 78%! That leaves 22% for the group you're probably thinking of: the people you know.
One interesting aspect of homicide "closure rates" (i.e., solving the crime, which is specifically NOT what happens when you get a plus in the "unknown" category) is that basically when a family member or friend kills one another, they are typically standing right there when the cops show up. The weapon is on the table, the circumstances are clear, there's not much to do other than fill out the paperwork.
Let's be careful out there with these statistics ...
/jordan