Posted on 01/11/2013 5:10:22 PM PST by marktwain
A couple of days ago I received an email from one of my correspondents, Shirley C. to be specific, and therein was a list of countries with murder rates greater than the U.S. Quite a few there were. But my curiosity was piqued, and I was sucked into another paroxysm of impulsive number crunching. Well, something to that effect. Here are the results.
First, there’s my reconstruction, reordering and summarizing of the murder rates from various regions of the world:
A couple of minutes’ scrutiny of the table makes it obvious that the highest murder rates are in sub-Sahara Africa and Latin America. If Mexico were not included in the North American stats, our rate, including the U.S., would be below 4.0 murders per 100,000 of population.
The ethnic/cultural implications veritably scream for consideration, but that would be, of course, racist. Perhaps this post will qualify me for consideration as such. But it does appear that guns, when it comes to murder, at least on a planetary basis, are much less of a factor than the civilizational advancement of a particular locale. I leave it to astute readers to decide for themselves how the variation of same within the conterminous United States and its population centers is a factor in local murder rates.
If you wish to see country-by-country details of the murder rate stats, the full spreadsheet is available here for downloading or perusal.
One more thing, if guns are such a defining factor in murder rates, why has the Obama Administration sent full-automatic assault weapons to Mexico, a country with a murder rate nearly five-times that of the U.S.?
Just asking.
Ciao.
Remove Black murders and Hispanic murders from the U.S. rate, and the non-Hispanic White (European anticedents) murder rate drops to 1.5/100,000.
European Murder Rates Compared to the United States: Demographics vs Guns
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2013/01/european-murder-rates-compared-to.html
anticedents should be antecedents
I don’t believe the FBI or whoever keeps such records makes a distinction between homicide and justified homicide.
If you’d remove New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Wash.DC, and Los Angelos from North America
as well as Mexico, we’d probably be similar to western Europe.
How the FBI defines Justifiable Homicide
DOCUMENTATION: Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence by Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser, Volume 30, Number 2 of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, pages 649-694.
QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: “If you are surprised by our findings, so are we. We did not begin this research with any intent to “exonerate” handguns, but there it is — a negative finding, to be sure, but a negative finding is nevertheless a positive contribution. It directs us where not to aim public health resources.”
INDIRECTION: The trick hoplophobes always use is to say that America has higher gun-murder rates than other countries, but many of those “murders” are criminals killed in the act of committing violent crimes or criminal gang members killing each other. Compare absolute murder rates, and the result is “more guns, less murder.” (Source: GunFacts.info);
SECOND INCONVENIENT FACT: According to DOJ crime statistics, guns are used by US citizens 2.5 million times per year to prevent violent crimes like rape, robbery, home-invasion and carjacking, 99% of the time without a shot being fired. (Source: GunFacts.info)
THIRD INCONVENIENT FACT: “Assault weapons” (AKA semiautomatic rifles) are used in less than 1% of gun crimes. (Source: GunFacts.info)
QUESTION: If gun-free zones make people safe, then why don’t we declare the immediate vicinity of the President and Vice-President to be gun-free zones and send the Secret Service home? Or are gun-free zones good enough for our kids, but not good enough for our overlords? It is the height of arrogance and hypocrisy for politicians to surround themselves with armed guards while insisting that our children be soft targets.
METAPHOR: America has more private gun ownership than most other countries, so naturally there are more gun murders. America also has more hospitals than most other countries, so naturally we have more people dying in hospitals. Does that mean we should outlaw hospitals?
FINAL INCONVENIENT FACT: Since 1900, governments have murdered 262 million of their own citizens, and strict gun control was always the first step.
FINAL DOCUMENTATION:
Of Holocausts and Gun Control, Washington University Law Quarterly, Volume 75, Number 3, Fall 1997 (pp. 1237-1275)
Justifiable homicide is why I question the murder rate in Detroit. Obviously the murder rate is high but the city also leads the nation in justifiable homicide. Plus you always have various law enforcement agencies pushing higher numbers to justify more money etc.
Remove all the medium to small cities along with the big and the murder rate in America would fall off the scale.
The numbers for central America are skewed because Mexico has a Civil War going on that no one reports as a civil war. Similarly, in some regions of Africe.
There was a very interesting articles years ago which was titled something like “When is a murder not a murder?” Answer: when it is manslaughter. All the definitions have to be the same for the statistics to count.
No we wouldn’t. By in large, the larger cities have higher concentrations of murder. If you take away the large cities in America, but not the large cities in Western Europe, you only create a false result. I don’t why you even suggested it.
Bttt.
Mexico is part of North America (ie., NAFTA).
Thank you for this...what a great piece...I sent it out to friends and family.
I have never seen a compilation of world homicide statistics based not just on nationality, but entirely by ethnic race. Not as easy as all that, because internationalists are profoundly opposed to such classifications on philosophical grounds.
But say you took the big four human races: White/Caucasian, Mongoloid/Asian, Negroid/Black, and Australoid. While there should be an “other” group as well as a “mixed” group, these are rejected as well by most governments and statisticians. Perhaps the very nebulous “Hispanic” should be included.
In any event, it would be very interesting to see what ethnic race dominates the world in both homicide and victimization.
Save for later
A couple of minutes' scrutiny of the table makes it obvious that the highest murder rates are in sub-Sahara Africa and Latin America. If Mexico were not included in the North American stats, our rate, including the U.S., would be below 4.0 murders per 100,000 of population.Thanks marktwain.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.