[yummyfajitas]

It's also, significantly, an outlier in its rate of firearm-related deaths,

The US is also an outlier in it's rate of bludgeoning and stabbing, at 1.7/100,000. By contrast, the murder rate (all weapons) in western europe is 1.0/100,000, southern europe is 1.4/100,000, and northern europe is 1.5/100,000.

I suppose bill of rights causes stabbings and beatings also?

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

[adventured]

The US rate of violent crime is half that of Canada, and 75% lower than Britain. It's lower than France, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, and so on.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-...

[arethuza]

Worth noting a couple of points made in an article in Telegraph (which is of a similar political view to the Mail) that covers the same ground:

"Researchers admit that comparisons of crime data between countries must be viewed with caution because of differing criminal justice systems and how crimes are reported and measured."

"A Home Office spokesperson said: “These figures are misleading. Levels of police recorded crime statistics from different countries are simply not comparable since they are affected by many factors, for example the recording of violent crime in other countries may not include behaviour that we would categorise as violent crime. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/5712573...

NB I'm not denying that the UK probably has more violent crime than the US (although I suspect that, just as with gun crime in the US, this is highly concentrated in particular areas and times).

[adventured]

I agree, there's little question it changes quite a bit based on definition of violent crime. However, it's a sizable margin of difference. For example it notes that Canada is roughly twice the US on violent crime, if you doubled the US number to match the variance in definition (if that's the case), it'd still be a distinctly interesting data point.

[narcissus]

To extend that: according to my understanding of a discussion I had with my cousin (a police officer in Australia), threats of a violent crime are recorded as a violent crime, as far as statistics are concerned there.

That is to say, "I have a knife... give me the money" is the same as stabbing someone, even if there was no knife.

[adventured]

In the US if you walk into a convenience store, say that you have a knife or gun, and take the money, that's recorded as a violent crime.

[narcissus]

Thanks for the information. I guess I didn't really come out and say "I don't know how it works in other countries", but I imagine that it's the little things like that, maybe differences across all countries, that make this kind of thing really hard to easily quantify.

[Kurtz79]

Actually your data further validate the other user's point, since in the ratios you mention are much less significant in terms of deviation that the ones related to firearms deaths.

I wouldn't call the US an "outlier" for the data you mention.