New York murder rate at lowest rate in 50 years The previous low in modern times was 471 murders back in 2009. So it's pretty clear we are going to shatter this record and shatter it by a lot," Mr Bloomberg said. Murders are down almost 19 per cent this year compared with last year. They are down 35 per cent from where they were 11 years ago when our administration began. The number of shootings in the city also fell to a record low 1,353 this year, down 8.5 per cent from last year, said Bloomberg. The previous low was 1,420 in 2009. "We're taking 8,000 weapons annually out of the hands of people we stop, 800 of them illegal handguns," police commissioner Ray Kelly said in a statement. Mr Bloomberg, who took office in 2002, has followed the "zero tolerance" crime-fighting policies of his predecessor Rudy Giuliani, a no-nonsense former federal prosecutor under whom the city's murder rate fell significantly. In 1990, four years before Mr Giuliani took office, the city saw more than 2,245 murders - meaning the number is now five times lower, according to police statistics. With the decrease in murder, New York's murder rate has fallen to 3.8 homicides per 100,000 residents. New York City has a far lower murder rate than other major American cities," Bloomberg said. Last week, Mr Bloomberg announced that the city's prison population had fallen by a third from 2001 to 2011. At the ceremony, the New York mayor again called for quick action on gun control in the wake of the school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Previously, he has called the killings a "tipping point" in the national debate on guns. "Newtown was not an isolated event," he said. It is a national tragedy and it demands a national response.