Even so, 2010 is proving to have fewer slayings than 2009.
Still Scotland officials say a single death is one too many and they are looking for solutions.
Laurinburg Mayor Matthew Block said more community involvement is needed.
"All of us, parents, neighbors, so-called community leaders, need to put an end to the household and community conditions that lead to adolescent boys getting involved with guns and crime and ruining their lives and the lives of others before they even know what they're doing," Block said.
Scotland county Sheriff Shep Jones said law enforcement long taken a proactive approach to these types of crimes.
Jones said his office has conducted gang conferences, instituted the Gang Resistance Education and Training program in area schools along with Laurinburg police, and made efforts to teach children about the dangers of drugs.
Targeted enforcement in problem neighborhoods is another tactic of the sheriff's office.
"We are concentrating police work on some of these areas that have had a lot of criminal activity," Jones said, in hopes investigators can "clean those areas up."
The sheriff's office has also encouraged neighborhood watches, rebuilding several defunct programs and encouraging residents in other areas to start new groups.
He hopes the decline in homicides continues throughout the year.
Jones added that may be why there has been a reduction in the number of reported homicides this year. In the first six months of 2009, there were six reported homicides in Scotland County, three each for the sheriff's office and the Laurinburg Police Department. Each agency has only had one this year, a 66.7 percent drop.
In 2008, there had been seven reported homicides by this point in the year, with six in the county and one in the city.
Maxton only had one slaying last year, the same as this year, but it occurred in January instead of June.
"I would like to think that some of the programs that we've put in place are having an affect on the county as a whole," Jones said. "Hopefully, the reason that the murders are down is because some of this stuff is getting to people."
Jones was at a loss as to why the shooting deaths in Scotland County and the killing of a Laurinburg teen in Maxton all happened in a two week period when the nearly six-month span before was without such an incident.
"Some people believe it's the hot weather, where people tend to have shorter fuses," Jones said.
Another theory is that crimes typically happen in groups, he said.
Whatever the cause, Jones said these crimes are unfortunate for the family of the victim since they've lost a loved one. The crimes are hard on the families of those accused as well, he said, because the mandatory life sentence for anyone convicted of first-degree murder takes their loved one away too.
"It's just unfortunate," he said.
The sheriff's office isn't the only agency taking steps towards reducing violent crime.
Laurinburg police instituted the Neighborhood Improvement Team program, or NIT, in response to a spike in shootings in the first half of 2009. NIT is a group of officers who patrol individual neighborhoods, targeting efforts in areas with higher crime rates.
The tactic decreased the "shots fired" calls by at least 75 percent in the city, according to several reports given to city council by Police Chief John Evans.
Crime in 2010 has been dominated by a rash of robberies that primarily targeted sweepstakes venues. Those robberies have been mainly solved with the arrest of a group of teenagers responsible for nearly a dozen robberies and break-ins in Laurinburg. Police also arrested two alleged conspirators they say coordinated two heists of an internet gaming cafe where one of them worked.
"Although the murder rate is very low, even one murder in the city is too many," Mayor Block said. "What concerns me a lot is how young many of the males are that are involved in gun-related crimes, whether it is murder or larceny."
Block called for residents to give more support to city youth as a remedy for crime.
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