[nverno]

> Poverty, inequality, ignorance, lack of health support for drug users, all bring violence.

This is certainly not generally true. There are many countries with much greater poverty, inequality, and ignorance (at least measured by education) than the US that have much less violent crime. I'd imagine having more drug users per capita has a significant effect on violent crime everywhere however.

[balls187]

Can you provide a source for assertion?

The violence is fueled by two things: income inequality and the prevalence of guns.

Any country with those two factors will have a problem with violence; the fact that the US is the most civilized country among that list (and likely sits atop that list) is what is so damning.

[dsfyu404ed]

The largest single chunk of the violence is just the settling of drug industry business disputes. If the people doing the shooting had badges and got their pay stubs on state letterhead most people here wouldn't blink twice.

Whereas you may lean on an expensive and complicated court system to send an employee of the state to apply violence (or threats thereof) to someone who had wronged you until they right their wrong people in the drug industry has no such luxury since their disputes will not he heard by a court. Likewise they must DIY it. That means home invasions, shootings, etc, etc.

Back before people in these lines of work shot at each other (have you ever tried doing a drive by on horseback with a 6 shooter, doesn't work very well) over these sorts of disputes people would round up friends and beat each other up or people would torch houses.

Bringing our massive illegal economy out of the shadows would clean up a huge fraction of the violence by replacing a lot of it with threat of state violence. See prohibition for an example of the reverse case.

[nverno]

> Can you provide a source for assertion?

I was thinking of Indonesia, only because I lived there for a while, but those are factors in nearly every country.

> The violence is fueled by two things: income inequality and the prevalence of guns.

I don't think either of these are what cause the violence (maybe they throw fuel on the fire as you're saying though). People can be just as violent without weapons, and just as greedy when they are on the top. They just become more dangerous with money, guns, and lawyers.