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some of America’s largest cities are more dangerous for young males than a war zone like Iraq or Afghanistan. The study, conducted by the JAMA Network, included the cities of Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York City. ... Zip codes with the most violence in Chicago and Philadelphia had a notably higher risk of firearm-related death than US military personnel who served during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ... violence the same or greater than the risks faced by soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan; in some places, the death risk was almost double that of war.” ......

Are there are any other issues confronting our fractious republic that matter if Americans themselves are too scared to walk outside, lest they be mugged by a "bail reform"-freed perp or shot by a gangbanger in a drive-by shooting? As we get ready to close the chapter on this bloody year of 2021, that is the question all policymakers and all public-minded citizens ought to be asking themselves. Fortunately, if there is a silver lining to be found amid the unprecedented urban looting, the horrific anecdotes of children shot while playing outside and the historic overall homicide rates afflicting so...

Vice President Kamala Harris just returned from Guatemala where she discussed the "root cause" of the post-election "surge" of "migrants" to our southern border. Harris said, "People leave home ... because they don't have opportunities there to fulfill their basic needs like feeding their children or keeping a roof over their head, or they're fleeing some kind of harm." But the USA also faces a surge in crime, including homicide, in many American cities. Why aren't we discussing this root cause? It cannot be because, as Harris says about migrants, people "don't have opportunities there to fill their basic needs."...

This week's Democratic primary election for Philadelphia district attorney could presage outcomes in the 2022 and 2024 elections, but not in the way the winner would like. Foreigners are often surprised that Americans elect most of their local prosecutors -- and that these prosecutors can become major forces in public force. But we do and they can. Thomas Dewey, as a 38-year-old Manhattan district attorney, was a major presidential candidate in 1940 and was the Republican nominee in the following two elections. Pat Brown got his political start as San Francisco DA, and he and his son, Jerry, were governors...

During the first two months of President Bolsonaro's term, the Brazilian murder rate fell by 25%.  From riotimesonline.com: RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The murder rates in Brazil for January and February this year were 25 percent lower compared to the same period last year, according to G1’s national homicide index. The index is based on official data from the 26 states and the Federal District. Jair Bolsonaro was elected President of Brazil on 28 October 2018. President Bolsonaro has been adamant about reforming Brazil's extreme gun laws, to allow more Brazilians to defend themselves. Did President Bolsonaro's reform...

A 2016 article by the American Journal of Medicine claims that homicide rates in the U.S. are 7 times higher than an average of other “high income countries.”  This conclusion is based on a select list of OECD nations compiled in 2010.  The lowest income nation on the list is Hungary, where per capita GDP is $28,000 per year.  Turkey and Mexico did not make the cut because their per capita GDPs are respectively $25,000 and $19,000.  Latvia and Estonia are not on this list, presumably because Latvia joined the OECD in 2016 and Estonia joined in December of...

Either Blacks Are Violent Or Stats Are Racist! You Decide! video only

Chicago's per capita homicide rate climbed over the last decade, and the chances of an African-American being killed in the city spiked drastically, according to a new report. From 2005 to 2015, the city went from 17.3 homicides per 100,000 residents to a rate of about 18.8, according to a report from the Injury Prevention and Research Center at the Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. But the report held particularly troubling news for African-Americans. The rate for blacks in Chicago jumped from 36.1 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2005 to 46.5 a decade later. Other studies have shown steep drops...

In January of 2013, I wrote an essay on European Murder rates compared to the United States.  In it, I came to the conclusion that culture was the most important driver of homicide rates, and that the presence of guns was a minor factor.   It has been one of the most popular essays that I have written.   As I have pursued the subject further, the predominant and most important part of the "culture" predictor of high homicide rates appears to be a lack of faith in the criminal justice system. I have found that the same conclusion was reached...

I recently prepared for an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation concerning the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. I thought it would be worth my while to compare murder rates between the two countries, but also between adjoining divisions of those two countries. There was a time when Canadian murder rates were low enough compared to the U.S. for American gun-control advocates to argue in favor of Canadian style gun control for our country. This is no longer the case. It is certainly true that for Canada as a whole, murder rates are still considerably lower than for the United States...

When Jamie Fox gleefully spoke about getting to “kill all the White people” in his latest film, it was ignored by the Leftist media the way parents ignore the babble of an angry three year old. To Liberals, Blacks are tall children incapable of committing any wrongful act because their great, great grandparents were slaves. This paternalistic attitude may have been necessary and defendable for actual slaves set free after the Civil War, but by the dawn of the 20th century the grandchildren of Black slaves were moving into the middle class in some parts of the country. Woodrow Wilson...

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...

When the subject is gun control, those who demand more for the United States always point to Europe. Europe, they say, has more gun control than the United States, and lower murder rates. Europe, of course, is a diverse place. Some places have lots of guns and low murder rates. Some places have few guns and higher murder rates. The reason that many developed European countries have murder rates much lower than the United States is not guns or gun control. It is demographics. In 2006 the Department of Justice issued a report on violent felons in large urban counties....

BETWEEN 1999 and 2011 São Paulo's murder rate fell by almost three-quarters, turning what had been one of Brazil's most dangerous states into one of its safest. Now the violence is rising again. In the past two months more than 300 people have died in the state capital in an undeclared war between police and the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), a drugs gang, twice the tally for the same period last year. More than 90 police officers have been slain since January; the total for 2011 was 56. This year looks certain to close with the state murder rate...

For 3 years, American gun owners have been told that the best thing to happen for the profitability of firearm manufacturers was the election of Barack Hussein Obama. And in spite of the sentiments of liberals like Detroit News columnist Bill Johnson, the best thing to happen in the City of Detroit might be the awakening of its law abiding residents to the fact that they are for all intents and purposes on their own in the battle against crime in the murder capital of the United States. For nearly 40 years, Detroit has led the nation in murder rate....

The Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence has compiled a scorecard for each state, according to how they (the Bradyites) view each state’s gun laws. These statistics are through 2009. More restrictive states received higher scores. Utah received the best—or worst, depending on your perspective—score (0), and California received the worst (79). The score had several components, such as whether laws were in place to forbid bulk purchases, and whether there were “assault” weapons bans. Complete details are available at their site. The Guardian, doing the job American papers have forgotten to do, and using the Fed’s data, compiled each...

Every day, the press focuses on the death toll in Iraq. Not only do they point out the total number of deaths, but they draw special attention to the number of Americans killed in Iraq. The liberals in the media want everyone to hear and see the negative side of this war and they will do whatever it takes to make things seem as bad as possible. What they won't do is give you comparisons to other death toll statistics so that you can judge for yourself, just how bad things really are. The anti-war protestors feed on these media...