The homicide trend has varied through time, and studies uniformly show higher rates of homicide in the South. Large cities have the highest rates, but rural areas have higher rates than small towns. Findings consistently show that homicide victims and offenders are disproportionately black males. The social organization of homicide varies over time, although in all periods, males arguing in a nonwork setting over presumably trivial matters is a major type. Domestic feuds represent a small but persistent percentage of cases in most periods. The ideology linked to this organizational form is often reported to involve sexual infidelity or money. Most sociological studies attribute some importance to gun use in homicides, but is not known if availability alone is the primary issue. While the association between alcohol use and homicide has been shown to be significant in a number of studies, specific factors relating the two have not been identified. The process leading to homicide has been shown frequently to be an escalating conflict between victim and offender that neither seems capable of resolving without violence. Although homicide research and theorizing have established some persistent findings and some interesting etiological leads, the field often seems redundant and stagnant. Three major activities that can increase productivity are (1) closer examination of persistent findings, (2) clarification of the genre of human activity that homicide represents, and (3) efforts at previously unexplored comparisons. A total of 42 notes are listed.