[zenlikethat]

No, you're not the only one. While I don't like the depressing level of homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction, I generally haven't felt nearly as unsafe as people always play up. If there's a volatile situation around, GTFO, and don't walk in dark neighborhoods at night, de-escalate, that kind of thing helps a lot of course.

Also, why do we never factor gun violence into these conversations about safety? In SF there are relatively few people walking around strapped. I looked it up, and in my hometown of Louisville, KY (which is no Detroit or Baltimore), there were about 130 gun injuries/deaths per 100k in a recent year -- in SF, about 30! Which is worse, getting shot, or avoiding poop on the sidewalk?

But also, for what it's worth, I'm a reasonably tall white guy. I think that affects how many unsafe situations I'm likely to encounter A LOT.

[lelanthran]

> there were about 130 gun injuries/deaths per 100k in a recent year -- in SF, about 30! Which is worse, getting shot, or avoiding poop on the sidewalk

San Francisco is number 23 for violent crime in the list of cities on wikipedia.

Your options are not "get shot in another city Vs avoiding poop on the sidewalk in San Francisco", it's "don't get hurt or killed in the average city Vs get hurt or killed in San Francisco".

You're equivocating "lack of gun crime" to safety, which is as incorrect as you can get while still misleading the audience

[mlyle]

> San Francisco is number 23 for violent crime in the list of cities on wikipedia.

No. It's number 37. It's number 23 with the default sort, which is alphabetical order. (California is early in the alphabet).

It's number 66 when you sort by homicides per 100k.

[lelanthran]

> No. It's number 37. It's number 23 with the default sort, which is alphabetical order. (California is early in the alphabet).

I checked, you're correct, but my point that it is more dangerous than the average city is still correct, even at #37.

> It's number 66 when you sort by homicides per 100k.

So? We're talking about safety here, not fatality. When people talk about safety, which is what I was responding to[1], they literally talking about violence, not "only violence that results in death".

I specifically addressed the posters dishonest equivocation that in other cities he is likely to be shot, while in SF all he has to do is step over poop.

The clear fact is that you're, on average, less safe in San Francisco than elsewhere; the gun argument doesn't factor into this so using it to show how "safe" SF is, is pointless ideology that is both irrelevant and dishonest.

[1] This is verbatim from the post I responded to:

> I generally haven't felt nearly as unsafe as people always play up.

[joshuamorton]

> I checked, you're correct, but my point that it is more dangerous than the average city is still correct, even at #37.

It's actually probably 41st, but Durham, Toledo, Greensboro and Charlotte don't report rape numbers, but their murder, and aggravated assault numbers are notably higher than SF's, and their burglary numbers are similar.

> The clear fact is that you're, on average, less safe in San Francisco than elsewhere;

Among the top 20 cities, SF is basically smack dab in the middle in terms of safety, I didn't want to spend the time normalizing by crime rate and population (and that gives the opportunity to debate what to do with NYC, who is both a massive outlier by crime and size), but I think a reasonable summary is that SF is about average in terms of violence on a city by city basis or resident-by-resident basis. And is probably safer than average on a resident-by-resident basis if you exclude NYC.

That's a different conclusion than what you're coming to.

[lelanthran]

> That's a different conclusion than what you're coming to.

All I'm doing is contending the OP's claim that he is safer in SF while at the same time he is not living in a city that is noticeably less violent.

Even if you do the legwork to find that SF has average violence, the OP's delusional assertion is still incorrect, because he is not safer than the average person in the average city.

[anigbrowl]

You know, when you make a statistical fail, the polite thing to do is take the correction in good heart and then sit it out for the day, instead of battling through the thread and tagging the person you originally disagreed with as 'delusional.'

[mlyle]

> So? We're talking about safety here, not fatality.

So? Not all violent crime is equally severe. Being forced to hand over your money is not the same as being killed.

> I specifically addressed the posters dishonest equivocation that in other cities he is likely to be shot,

Your odds of being shot seems to be significantly less in SF.

[lelanthran]

>> while in SF all he has to do is step over poop.while

> Your odds of being shot seems to be significantly less in SF.

Irrelevant to his point that all he has to worry about in a less-safe-than-average city is to step over poop.

If you're living in a city that has more violent crime than average, it's dishonest to claim that all you have to worry about is non-violent crime because "guns bad, m'kay?"

[mlyle]

> If you're living in a city that has more violent crime than average

It's not really clear to me this is the case. The average violent crime rate for the top 25 cities, excluding Charlotte (because they don't report most crimes to the feds) is 702/100,000; SF's is 715, which is a statistical tie. And then, the murder rate is way below the average.

You also need to consider demographics; e.g. a young city with an active club scene probably has a higher incidence of robberies.

I'd also appreciate you to cut the aggressive language in talking about this. If we're talking about fallacies, ranking cities in alphabetical order to determine their crime rates is not awesome. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, so perhaps reduce the amount of scorn you're piling on other people?

There's plenty to complain about in SF. My considered opinion is:

* SF is somewhat safer than the average large US city (violent crime rate is comparable; severe crimes are at a lower rate)

* Quality of life crime is really bad; #4 in your list of 100 for property crime, at a rate that is a high multiple of the average.

[stonogo]

Speaking of equivocation, no it isn't. It's number 23 for crime.

If you sort by total in the violent crime section, it's well out of the top fifty.

It's number four in property crime, which is awful, but not a measure of safety.

[lelanthran]

> If you sort by total in the violent crime section, it's well out of the top fifty.

As the other poster said, it's #37.

[mlyle]

It's number 23 in alphabetical order, actually :D

[NoImmatureAdHom]

I don't know where you got your gun injuries / death stats, but there are two things to be careful of here:

1) substitution effects. As a hypothetical example, we could have one city that has 30 gun murders per 100k and another that has 130 per 100k, but both have the same murder rate (because you can murder with things other than guns). IMHO the important rate is the murder rate, and how much of it is with guns vs. other stuff is an aside.

2) Make sure your numbers don't include suicides. If they include suicides, they're not informative.

[paulddraper]

> why do we never factor gun violence into these conversations about safety

Because it doesn't particularly matter if you are robbed, hurt, or killed by a gun, knife, bat, or fists.

(And when looking at stats, remember: over half of gun deaths in the U.S. are self-inflicted. Which is still tragic, but different than assault.)

[tjsnyder]

It does matter as guns are obviously far more deadly than the others

[paulddraper]

Disease is even deadlier.