More LGBTQ People Murdered This Year than in 2016

Yep, unfortunately you read that right. More LGBTQ people have been murdered this year than in all of 2017, and it’s only August.

According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, there have been 33 individual homicides so far in the U.S. that relate to gender or sexual orientation. That’s more than one a week. Last year, not counting the 49 victims of the Pulse shooting, considered a mass murder, 28 individual LGBTQ individuals were murdered.

“I think whether it’s an increase in reporting, an increase in violence, or some combination thereof, it should be a wake-up call for us across our communities that hate violence is not going away,” AVP director Beverly Tillery stated in an interview with Buzzfeed. “It’s certainly not decreasing, and it’s symptomatic of larger and deeper problems in our society that we still haven’t addressed.”

This data reflects all cases that are currently closed, and that are being accurately tracked and reported as hate crimes. The number could be higher if some data was not reported. Of the victims so far, 16 of those murdered were transgender. Gay, cisgender men are the second largest group to fall victim to hate crimes.

According to these statistics, murders of queer individuals are up by 17%. Most of the murders so far have been committed by someone who knew the victim. Let us band together and watch each other’s backs in an effort to keep these numbers from climbing.