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This story examined the impact advances in trauma care on homicide rates in our rural county in Pennsylvania. While homicide rates have dropped rapidly since the mid-1990s, the aggravated assault rate has not. The theory behind the assertion is the only difference between a serious aggravated assault and a homicide is that a homicide results in a death. If more patients are being saved through advances in trauma care, the homicide rate would drop without a reduction in the underlying violent crime. The lethality of assaults dropped in Cumberland County from more than 10 percent in 1995 to less than two percent in 2015. Had lethality remained at the 1995, the number of homicides in Cumberland County 1995 and 2015 would have doubled from 48 deaths to 100.