Im not an expert on this at all but if I were to guess, that percentage is heavily skewed by gang related murders, which inherently tend to have far less leads and cooperation with investigating law enforcement.
I would venture to guess that when it comes to high profile murders where the victims are not also criminals, the rate of solved cases is far higher.
I thought that myself but It doesn’t seem to be as heavily skewed as you would guess.
Contrary to Lott’s repeated claim that the U.S. has a relatively high homicide rate because of “drug gangs,” most gun homicides are not related to gang activity. According to the
National Gang Center, the government agency responsible for cataloging gang violence, there was an average of fewer than 2,000 gang homicides annually from 2007 to 2012. During roughly the same time period (2007 to 2011), the
Federal Bureau of Investigation estimated an average of more than 15,500 homicides annually across the United States, indicating that gang-related homicides were approximately 13% total homicides annually. The
Bureau of Justice Statistics finds the number of gang-related homicides to be even lower. In 2008, the government agency identified 960 homicides, accounting for 6% of all homicides that year.
According to the Federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (
OJJDP), there was a 3% increase in the number of gangs between 2010 and 2011, but gang-related homicides decreased 8% during the same period. If gang violence was truly driving the homicide rate, gang membership and gun homicide rates would move in the same direction.
A December 2020 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) report of 34 states, four California counties, and Washington, D.C., found that gang-related attacks were responsible for 11.4% of male homicides and 3.6% of female homicides in 2017, for 9.7% of overall homicides. The previous year, 7.4% of all homicides were gang-related.
https://www.gvpedia.org/gun-myths/gangs/