Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mothballed 119 days ago
In the US one of the best demographic predictor of homicide rates is skin color. For instance, super white places like New Hampshire with the ~loosest gun laws in the country have extremely low murder rates.

If you take a look at say a heat map of the US where homicide is[1], it tracks extremely closely to where the black population is (New Mexico an outlier despite having stronger gun laws than most the surrounding states besides Colorado).[2]

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Ho...

[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Af...

1 comments

What's also fascinating is that this metric is consistent even when controlling for socioeconomic status - ruling out "unfair circumstances! less opportunities!" arguments.