[anu_gupta]

Tangentially - the thing that most surprised me about this article was reading that over 150,000 Americans have been murdered in less than a decade.

I find that number utterly staggering. Wikipedia says that the homicide rate in the US is 4.2 per 100,000, which is more than 2.5 times the rate in Canada and 3.5 times the rate in the UK.

[grecy]

America has the highest murder rate of the developed world, higher even than a chunk of developing countries.

My quick glace showed America at 4.2, the next developed country is Finland at 2.2, so living in America you're 1.9 times more likely to be murdered than any other developed country.

Of course, the vast majority of Developed countries have a murder rate less than 1.0 per 100,000 people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

[tadfisher]

The United States is very large, and the homicide rate varies wildly between states and cities.

Where I live, Oregon, the homicide rate is 2.1 per 100,000 people, a little bit better than Finland as a whole. Hawaii is at 1.2, New Hampshire and Vermont are at 1.3, and Minnesota is at 1.4.

Contrast those with Louisiana at 11.2 per 100,000 people (!), Mississippi at 8.0, New Mexico at 7.5, and South Carolina at 6.8.

It's clear that the homicide rates in the US are aligned mostly along socio-economic and racial lines, so it doesn't make sense to compare the whole country against the more homogeneous states such as Finland, Norway, Germany, and Japan.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-...

[grecy]

I find it interesting when Americans don't want America as a whole to be compared to other countries as a whole, because inevitably it makes for an unfavorable comparison.

Of course looking at a country-wide statistic is an average across the whole country - that's the entire point. I'm sure if you really wanted to, you could find a part of Oregon where the homicide rate is 0.1, but that doesn't tell us much about the bigger picture.

Is America one united country, or isn't it?

[gyardley]

America has a single federal government, yes. If you just want a ranking, you can go ahead and use the national average.

However, America is ridiculously diverse culturally, and just using the national average is useless for understanding anything about America.

Perhaps the Americans in the thread aren't trying to avoid an unfavorable comparison - it's not like Americans aren't aware of the pros and cons of their own country. Perhaps they're actually trying to teach you something about their country and point out that relying on averages can be misleading.

[grecy]

> and just using the national average is useless for understanding anything about America.

I agree. We're talking about understanding America compared to other countries, not things about America internally.

>it's not like Americans aren't aware of the pros and cons of their own country

I completely disagree with that statement. How many times have you heard someone say "Best country in the world" with no understanding of the outside world? I'm continually shocked when meeting Americans that have absolutely no idea their infrastructure, education, health care, leave entitlements and general quality of life sucks compared to the developed world. They genuinely think they are the best in the world because that has been driven into them from day 1.

> relying on averages can be misleading.

Obviously looking at an average is exactly that. An average across the entire population, not a deep dive into where is the highest and where is the lowest, etc.

[tadfisher]

Those are strawman arguments. Meeting uninformed Americans is not evidence that the entirety of the American populace is ignorant of their failings as a developed nation.

For example, we are taught about slavery and the genocide of Native Americans in primary school. We dedicate an entire month to Black History because we are acutely aware of our status as one of the most institutionally racist countries on the planet. We have impasses at the highest levels of government over dealing with our failure to control healthcare costs, and that is something that many Americans are cognizant of. We are repeatedly informed of our failure to create a stable market economy. I can go on.

Please leave your preconceptions at the door when having a serious discussion.

[flyinRyan]

Very well, but next time you want to talk about the world's largest economy just keep this in mind.

[jff]

"Sorta". It's more appropriate to compare it to the EU than to, say, Germany. The EU will still come out ahead in terms of murder rate, but it more accurately reflects the US in terms of both governmental structure and diversity of people (Louisiana is as different from Washington as Italy is from Finland)

[freehunter]

America is one united federation of states. The federal government still exercises surprisingly little control over individual states, although that control is increasing over time. Most of the federal controls exist merely to regulate inter-state commerce to make sure there are no unfair practices where Michigan can enact laws to keep Indiana businesses from operating in their state. However, two neighboring states can have wildly different laws on local issues. Michigan for the longest time required motorcyclists to wear helmets when the neighboring states didn't, and only allows heavy trucks to have two trailers where other surrounding states allow them to carry three trailers at once.

Classifying America as one solid country all across is, to be honest, quite inappropriate. It's more of a slightly more put-together European Union, with a federal government existing just to make sure everyone plays fairly.

[grecy]

America is not unique in this regard, many other countries have vastly differing state laws too.

[freehunter]

I'm not terribly familiar with states in different countries, but I wasn't trying to imply America is necessarily unique. What I was trying to get across is that, for all intents and purposes, each state in the union (read union as union of federated states) is semi-independent and can do almost anything they want outside of printing their own currency. Even that law comes with a stipulation that you can print your own currency but still have to accept US dollars as well.

The parent had asked if the US in particular was one country. In actually, it's not quite that simple. Similar reason why people refer to Canadian provinces by their provincial title in some circumstances. British Columbia is only incidentally related to Nunavut. At the same time, Washington state is only incidentally similar to Alabama.

[sneak]

Finland is 5.3 million people.

Norway is 5 million people.

Sweden is 9.5 million people.

Michigan is 9.8 million people.

California is 37.6 million people.

New York is 19.4 million people

Germany is 81.7 million people.

Please keep scale in mind.

[grecy]

Why does scale have anything to do with a per capita statistic?

[jordanb]

Hong Kong's murder rate is 0.2 per 100,000. Iceland and Singapore both have a rate of 0.3.

Clearly Western Europe is a horrible, brutal, violent place against which the inhabitants of these countries should be clicking their tongues.

[tadfisher]

As scale increases, you invariably include populations that affect your per capita statistic. The EU as a whole has a 3.5 per 100k murder rate, for example; much higher than Germany or the UK alone.

[davidwparker]

If you think about it this one, then wouldn't it be best to compare homicides per kilometer or mile? The point the parent was making is entirely valid though- the United States is a huge country compared to most.

[jvm]

I'm sure you could cherry pick parts of Finland that have even lower gun violence. Conversely, unlike your cherry-picked states, parent actually chose Finland for its exceptionally high gun violence. Even if you broke out the 50 states few would be within the normal range for wealthy countries.

[tadfisher]

Believe it or not, I don't disagree with you. The majority of states in the US are not what you would think of as "developed" by any objective measure-- be it crime, poverty, health, education, or equality. That is why I included states like Louisiana with murder rates comparable to some African nations.

But you cannot deny that some regions of the US are developed, are great places to live, and are comparable in terms of geographic area, population, and economic output with the European countries mentioned in this thread. Basically, to anyone who has spent time here, Louisiana is as different from Oregon as Lithuania is from Denmark. To lump all the states together and draw meaning from the statistical average is to fundamentally misunderstand what America is: a coalition of independent states, with different agendas and demographics.

[grecy]

> misunderstand what America is: a coalition of independent states, with different agendas

Are you saying the agenda of Louisiana is to have murder rates, poverty, health and education comparable to undeveloped countries?

[chrisdroukas]

It's relative to the population size in a few cases, though. Here in DC the homicide rate was 21.9 per 100,000 in 2010. We also have a extremely restrictive firearm policies - city law prohibits carrying guns either openly or concealed.

Despite policy, DC also had the highest rate of homicide by firearm: 35.4 per 100,000 in 2005.

http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_05.html

[anu_gupta]

Yes but it's also fairly clear that homicide in the UK is also aligned with socio-economic and racial lines.

It's still far less prevalent than in the US.

[tadfisher]

The UK does not have quite the racial divide that is prevalent in the US. Remember that minorities were treated as second-class citizens here as recently as the 1960s, and are still subject to institutionalized discrimination. Socioeconomic mobility is much worse here than in the UK, reinforcing the "ghettoization" of minority groups in the US.

Factor in easy access to modern weaponry, an actively-discriminating and mostly white police force, and the war on drugs, and you have a mixing pot of racial tension, poverty, and crime.

Oregon is mostly white, so is Minnesota, Vermont, and New Hampshire. A city like New Orleans is 67% black, is mostly poor, and has one of the highest homicide rates in the country. I haven't come across a city like that in the UK.

My home town, Portland, is extremely segregated. The black population here is concentrated in an area smaller than a square mile in the Northeast quarter, and both crime rates and gang activity there outrank the rest of the city by a factor of five. This is a consequence of Oregon's racist policies (our state constitution actually banned African-American residency) that were in force until World War II, when a large black population migrated here to work at a shipbuilding yard in Northeast. After the war, a flood took out the shipbuilding yard and put most of those families out of work; their descendants are still in the same area, subject to socioeconomic pressures that keep them there.

So while Portland might sound like a great place to live, it is only because the crime is segregated into a small section of the city while white people enjoy kitchy neighborhoods and craft fairs.

[anu_gupta]

I sort of knew the murder rate in the US was high, but I didn't realise it was quite so out of step with "peer" countries (eg Canada, UK, Japan, etc).

And furthermore, having a tangible number like 150,000 people murdered drives home the stark reality of the situation.

[mdemare]

True, but the murder rate within the U.S. is wildly uneven. There are nine state with a lower murder rate than Finland, while one, Lousiana, has 5x the finnish murder rate.

[znowi]

Finland 2.2 - this is surprising. I expected less than 1.

[engtech]

If you find that staggering, then absolutely avoid looking at Japan homicide stats.

Japan is 0.4 per 100,000.

Japan has had the strictest gun control in the world for the longest time, and has a homicide rate to match.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

[Domenic_S]

Suicide rate in Japan is 23.7 per 100,000, double that of most developed countries.

Also, Japan's murder stats are rigged -- if the police don't know who the killer is it isn't a murder, it's an "abandoned body". See Freakonomics for more on this.

[makmanalp]

I support gun control and everything, but how do you know that the low homicide rate is because of the gun control? Japan has been a model for social order (putting aside organized crime, in the sense that you lose your wallet and it gets returned to you, muggings don't happen often, etc.) for a long time.

[engtech]

I don't know that the homicide rate is because of gun control. I don't think it is possible to directly come to that conclusion given the other societal factors.

But it's an interesting data point.

This article tries to dissuade that control gun is responsible for the low homicide rate in it's summary.

http://www.guncite.com/journals/dkjgc.html

"The idea that Japanese gun laws should serve as model for other nations is not uncommon. Some Americans propose laws even more severe than Japan's.[124] Often, the suggestion comes as an offhand remark in an newspaper editorial, but even when the suggestion is advanced by scholars, the reasoning is often superficial and unpersuasive.

L Craig Parker, an American expert on the Japanese police, proposes that the United States adopt Japanese gun control and also other Japanese strategies, such as a National Police Agency. Parker's brief discussion of guns, however, simply recites statistics showing that Japan has less guns and less gun crime. His only evidence that gun control would actually reduce crime in America is a study by Dr Leonard Berkowitz arguing that guns cause aggression. Actually, what the studies by Berkowitz and others showed was that people acted more aggressively towards other people if the other person was associated with weapons; for example, motorists reacted more aggressively to other vehicles slow to accelerate when a red light turned green if the slow car had a rude bumper sticker and a rifle in a gun rack.[125]

Summing up the perspective of many gun prohibitionists, one Japanese newspaper reporter writes, 'It strikes me as clear that there is a distinct correlation between gun control laws and the rate of violent crime. The fewer the guns, the less the violence'.[126] But the claim that fewer guns correlates with less violence is plainly wrong. America experienced falling crime and homicide rates in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1980s, all periods during which per capita gun (p.40)ownership, especially handgun ownership, rose.[127] And Japan, with its severe gun control, suffers no less murder than Switzerland, one of the most gun-intensive societies on earth.[128]

Japan's gun control does play an important role in the low Japanese crime rate, but not because of some simple relation between gun density and crime. Japan's gun control is one inseparable part of a vast mosaic of social control. Gun control underscores the pervasive cultural theme that the individual is subordinate to society and to the Government. The same theme is reflected in the absence of protection against Government searches and prosecutions. The police are the most powerful on earth, partly because of the lack of legal constraints and particularly because of their social authority."

I found that article from this:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/a-l...

[makmanalp]

Awesome POV, thanks!

[cleaver]

Comparison between the USA and Canada is probably more meaningful. In recent times, Canadian gun laws have been stricter, but that was not always the case. There's something else behind the numbers. Universal healthcare? Cold weather? Who knows?

[engtech]

If you're talking about the recent long gun registry, Canada has always had much stricter gun legislation than the U.S.

This website gives a walk through of the process required to legally obtain a gun in Canada:

http://www.howtogetagun.ca/

In 35 years of urban living in Canada, I've never seen a firearm that was not being carried by a law enforcement official. I do not know anyone who owns a fire arm.

This seems very different compared to some of the slogans I saw in the recent U.S. election where you could "vote and win a free gun". http://www.inquisitr.com/376318/vote-in-georgia-win-a-free-g...

[JoeAltmaier]

This underlines what NRA folks have been saying: strict gun registration laws are tantamount to a ban, as your experience illustrates.

[UnFleshedOne]

Not in my experience. There are plenty of shooting ranges in Canada and they are always full. Properly equipped shooting range is the only place where you can legally shoot restricted guns -- pistols and such. Rifles and shotguns (unrestricted) on the other hand are common in rural areas and you can buy one in Canadian Tire in hunting section and shoot on your property or crown land. I know few people who drive around with a rifle in the back of their truck. No automatics anywhere though. :(

You have to pass a safety test (common sense, plus some regulations) and get few references to slightly increase the chance that you are not criminally insane to get PAL, but it is really less than a weekend worth of effort (and some waiting for papers).

[flyinRyan]

I would throw my dart at financial inequality. The further the upper class gets from the other classes, and the harder it is to go from the bottom class upwards, the more likely people are to step outside the seemingly rigged [1] system.

[1] If you're at the bottom rung and statistics say that you're about as likely to win the lottery as to get out, the system will almost certainly seem rigged to you even if it isn't.

[ProCynic]

You'll probably find this interesting then. It's about how violence rates have changed over time, and some guesses about causation. http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Nature-ebook/dp/B005...

[anu_gupta]

Yes, that does look interesting. Have Kindled it, thanks!

[joshuahedlund]

Just something to keep in mind when comparing statistics between countries... The United States is approximately the size/population of Europe, and its individual states are approximately the size/population of European countries. It's always hard for the US to beat every state-sized country, just as there will always be US states with numbers above and below the overall average. The overall European average of 3.5 per 100,000 is somewhat less impressive.

[anu_gupta]

That European average is for the whole of the geographical entity known as Europe, so I'm not sure how fair the comparison is. The population of Europe as a whole is 2.3 times that of the US. Also the US is a single political entity, with (for the most part) ons set of laws. Many of the Eastern European countries do not fall within a similarly consistent legal framework.

If remove Eastern Europe, then the homicide rates for the rest of Europe are:

Northern Europe 1.5

Southern Europe 1.4

Western Europe 1.0

Conversely, including other parts of the Americas (ie Canada and Central America) massively increases the average homicide rate - Central America's rate is a truly shocking 28.5

[flyinRyan]

So next time someone trots out the US being the largest economy on earth, I can use your same argument? We should be comparing all of Europe to the US since that's more realistic, right?