UN Report Reveals Odds of Being Murdered Country By Country 386
ananyo (2519492) writes "A new UN report (link to data) details comprehensive country-by-country murder rates. Safest is Singapore, with just one killing per 480,000 people in 2012. In the world's most violent country, Honduras, a man has a 1 in 9 chance of being murdered during his lifetime. The Economist includes an intriguing 'print only interactive' (see the PDF) and has some tongue-in-cheek tips on how to avoid being slain: 'First, don't live in the Americas or Africa, where murder rates (one in 6,100 and one in 8,000 respectively) are more than four times as high as the rest of the world. Next, be a woman. Your chance of being murdered will be barely a quarter what it would be were you a man. In fact, steer clear of men altogether: nearly half of all female murder-victims are killed by their partner or another (usually male) family member. But note that the gender imbalance is less pronounced in the rich world, probably because there is less banditry, a mainly male pursuit. In Japan and South Korea slightly over half of all murder victims are female. Then, sit back and grow older. From the age of 30 onwards, murder rates fall steadily in most places.'"
I've made a decision (Score:5, Funny)
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You don't have to go that far--just move to Liechtenstein. [wikipedia.org]
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To Liechtenstein would be going too far for a Kiwi like me.
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You're green and fuzzy with a bad aftertaste?
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Actually, he has wings, can't use them but can run really fast. And he also cuuuute! :)
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mmmm, kiwi [imgur.com]
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In order to live as long as possible, I have decided to have gender reassignment surgery to become a woman, and I will move to Antarctica and start a utopian lesbian society, since there are no murders there. I haven't worked out the details yet, but it seems like a no-brainer.
You could start with killing somebody else -- the odds of *two* murders occuring would be even lower!
Re:I've made a decision (Score:4, Funny)
Oh you and your facts.
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man on LGBT violence appears more prevalent because it always makes the evening news...because the victim always looks great.
Re:I've made a decision (Score:5, Funny)
man on LGBT violence appears more prevalent because it always makes the evening news...because the victim always looks Faaaabulous
Erm.. fixed that for you.
Re:I've made a decision (Score:5, Interesting)
Most men are killed because of who they are - gay men and transgendered people are frequently killed for how they were born. If you can't distinguish the two, and why one is heinously more severe than the other, you fail as a human being.
you take this way too seriously. for example, the un report doesn't count murders perpetrated in the name of "war on terror" (never actually reconned as a war, so those are plain criminal killings wether prosecuted or not) and this omission alone renders the figures meaningless anyway. just an example of many other ways people get killed without making it to the headlines or fancy un statistics. it's just gossip for gutmenschen (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutmensch).
that said, how considering killing "because of how" fundamentally more heinous and severe than "because of who" is supposed to make a "better" human out of someone is beyond me.
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If you can't distinguish the two, and why one is heinously more severe than the other, you fail as a human being.
Oh so you're not stabbing me to death because I'm gay, you're stabbing me so you can steal my money! I feel much better about that, thanks! uuurrrrrrrggggggh *splat*
Re:I've made a decision (Score:4, Insightful)
I know you're joking, but that is exactly how twisted left wing ideology gets when it has festered too long.
I want you to take a moment and honestly consider the following question.
Which of these two do you think is more likely:
1) The left wants to turn everyone into black transgender lesbian atheistic Muslims on welfare having abortions, and the right wing is absolutely right about the liberal agenda...
2) The left believes in respecting the humanity, identity, and choices of people, and the right wing tries to demonize liberal ideology in order to make foolish people (like yourself) believe that protecting a choice or identity is the same as forcing it on people.
Liechtenstein (Score:3)
here I come!
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Singapore (Score:5, Insightful)
It may not be a democracy, but we have to admit, they do a lot of things RIGHT. It is a pleasure to live there, as long as you have no political ambitions.
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Singapore, or as William Gibson put it: Disneyland with the death penalty [wired.com].
Re:Singapore (Score:5, Insightful)
Draconian punishments for even minor offenses will make a place safe, doesn't mean that they are doing it right.
If we were doing a 10th of what they do (mandatory capital punishment for possession of 15g of heroin, heavy whipping for graffiti, 3 months in prison plus whipping as a mandatory minimum sentence for foreigners overstaying their visa etc) the same people who admire their low crime rate would be calling it fascism.
Re:Singapore (Score:5, Insightful)
it's a city state
the policies that work for one small rich densely populated tightly controlled area does not apply to large areas of rural and urban, rich and poor
singapore offers no lessons about how to run real countries
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It will be solved when the US legalizes drugs, and stops putting people in jail (coincidentally breaking up families, something highly correlated with children becoming criminals later in life) for non violent crime. The whole stigma associated with having been incarcerated means even if they served their time (with actual violent nasty people) even for something nonviolent, they will have an incredibly hard time finding gainful employment afterwards.
This problem lies squarely on the hypocritical protestant
Re:Singapore (Score:4, Interesting)
If you think you can have a career in drug dealing, then you would indeed be very, very dumb to try that in Singapore. The result is that the city state is visibly suffering far less from drug abuse issues than nearly any other city.
And indeed, neither the government, NOR THE LOCALS, are fond of graffiti. If you want to be an asshole and try it anyway, well you know the risk associated.
And yes, even the locals call it a "fine" city as their are fines for a lot of misdemeanors, yet the fine system did change behaviour. As an amusing example, if I am remembering well, you can have a fine for not flushing in a public toilet. This had an effect, you have to keep in mind the poor uncultivated beginnings of Singapore.
Currently the behaviour of most everyone is changed, nobody even wonders if they should apply basic hygienic procedures.
I agree that whipping is draconian and overkill towards foreigners overstaying their work visum. It is luckily enough of a deterrent to strongly discourage the practice.
In general however it is not at all a fascist police state. I have lived there, I experienced it. I would call the non-democratic government rather a kind of "enlightened despotism", and I (and my fellow expats back then) had to admit that they did a lot of things very, very well indeed.
Interestingly, Singapore in the 1980s was the model for Deng Xiaoping who during a visit noticed how you can have good prosperity and strong government influence together. This is how he started the reforms that made China into the economic powerhouse that it is now.
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Look, I am a normal dude who doesn't involve in criminal activities. Life is good then in Singapore.
First, they came for...
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Re:Singapore (Score:5, Interesting)
> Draconian punishments for even minor offenses will make a place safe, doesn't mean that they are doing it right.
Incarceration rates per 100K
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Singapore: 230
US: 716
Capital punishment:
It was true that a couple of decades ago, they did this a lot (ranked 2nd then). Now they seem to be doing it 5 - 10 times less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
4 were executed in 2011. None in 2010.
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The definition gets fuzzy when those defining 'crime' get to change it arbitrarily.
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Singapore has 13.8 executions per 100,000 [wikipedia.org], which is more than the 12.5 murders per 100,000 in Africa (though I don't know the execution rate in Africa).
Sure the executed Singaporeans have (generally) broken the law, but how many murder victims are killed because they're involved with crime? And if you can blame someone for getting caught up with a gang that pressures them to commit crime then why can't you blame someone for remaining with a violent spouse who might harm them?
I'm not sure I'd feel much safer
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Honestly, what is bad about that? Drugs are linked to increased criminal activity. The city state successfully scared off the smugglers.Perhaps the USA should take an example in this matter instead.
Regarding "jailing homosexuals", you are plain wrong. There are a good number of lbgt people in the city. It is true, very unfortunately it is still somewhere in th
Brazilian rates (Score:2)
Next, be a woman (Score:5, Insightful)
A women may be less likely to be murdered but more likely to be raped.
rape is *the* lowest category of violent crime (Score:4, Insightful)
A women may be less likely to be murdered but more likely to be raped.
That's mostly because the FBI doesn't consider prison rape to be a crime; I think the estimates I hear are typically around 200,000-300,000 male prison rape victims a year, which comes close to making the rape stats 50/50. There's also very little interest in figuring out the underreporting rate for male rape victims in open society; hell, in many places it isn't even a crime for a woman to rape a man because of the way rape was defined.
But even if you ignore all that: I'll take those odds. Rape has the lowest occurrence rate in the US of any violent crime, and not only that, it's declined the most over the last decade or two as well. Men are several times more likely to be KILLED. Last time I checked, that was worse.
By the way: case clearance rates for female homicide victims are higher than for male homicide victims.
You can either listen to the gender issues folks, who make it sound like violence against women is a HUGE CRISIS, or you can read the BJS statistics. Women have been, and continue to be, a protected class in the US.
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By the way: case clearance rates for female homicide victims are higher than for male homicide victims.
You can either listen to the gender issues folks, who make it sound like violence against women is a HUGE CRISIS, or you can read the BJS statistics. Women have been, and continue to be, a protected class in the US.
Want to bet that the clearance rate for female homicide victims has something to do with the fact that they disproportionally killed by people close to them?
Re:rape is *the* lowest category of violent crime (Score:4, Informative)
When I was in US, I was very puzzled at the lack of empathy in public discourse towards prison rape. This was especially surprising since US leads the world in incarceration rate (3.5 times the supposedly âoeevery thing is a crimeâ Singapore) - so it is not even as if prison is reserved for the worst of the worst, with non-violent offenders frequently jailed, let alone the argument of punishing as sentenced and nothing more.
However, I don't understand your chain of reasoning. You argued that there is significant amount of rape when prisons are taken in account and then go on to say...
> Rape has the lowest occurrence rate in the US of any violent crimeâ.
> Men are several times more likely to be KILLED.
Clearly not, even with just using numbers you list.
According to Human Rights Watch though
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/200... [hrw.org]
âoe4.5 percent of the state and federal prisoners surveyed reported sexual victimization in the past 12 months. Given a national prison population of 1,570,861, the BJS findings suggest that in one year alone more than 70,000 prisoners were sexually abused.â
According to this somewhat dated stats...
http://www.oneinfourusa.org/st... [oneinfourusa.org]
Rape is far, far more common compared to homicide, anywhere in the world.
> You can either listen to the gender issues folks, who make it sound like violence against women is a HUGE CRISIS, or you can read the BJS statistics. Women have been, and continue to be, a protected class in the US.
Yes, it has declined according to BJS. But the starting numbers are so high, that it is still considered a large problem.
Re:rape is *the* lowest category of violent crime (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was in US, I was very puzzled at the lack of empathy in public discourse towards prison rape. This was especially surprising since US leads the world in incarceration rate
These are related statistics. They both stem from the idea that criminals, all criminals regardless of crime, are somehow different from regular folks and not deserving of compassion. It's not something that you'll ever hear explicitly stated, but implicitly when people talk about the need to be "tough on crime" and the unshakable faith that ever harsher sentences are the right approach to addressing the problem.
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Best to be an expert cross-dresser who can choose the safest gender for the occasion.
Re:Next, be a woman (Score:4, Insightful)
"Rape is a horrible, horrible crime. But for all of that, the victim, can live a full and normal life after the fact."
No, no they can't. Some women recover okay, but others find themselves with a lifelong trauma that leaves them unable to form healthy relationships, leaves them scared to leave their homes, and then others just outright commit suicide. Pretending it's something that just happens and then that's it, it's over and you carry on as normal is probably one of the most stupid things I've ever seen modded up on Slashdot. I'm not sure if you just have no understanding of rape whatsoever and are completely out of depth on this topic, or if you just phrased your post incredibly poorly and unintentionally trivialised it as a result, but either way you really couldn't be more wrong in the way it's written. The very fact a non-negligible number of victims commit suicide implies that for some of them they'd actually rather be dead than have to deal with the aftermath of being raped.
I understand that by definition murder means no ifs, no buts, there's no life afterwards, but for some victims the experience and aftermath of being raped was literally worse than death for them so you cannot just simplistically say that it's not worse than murder. That depends entirely on the victim, and what happened to them - it's so dependent on the case in question. For example, I'd have a hard time buying the idea that the murder of a 70 year old man who lived a full life and who had terminal cancer and only 6 months to live is somehow worse for the victim than a woman that's had to live her life with non-stop memories, clinical depression, and constant reminders of being repeatedly raped by a family member when she was a kid. I know without a doubt which victim I'd rather be.
In contrast, a girl who slept with a guy and then changed her mind afterwards and then decided to cry rape, and lived in a country where that is legally acceptable to do so (Hi Sweden), probably wont have the slightest bit of trauma to suffer at all other than maybe a bit of regret about sleeping with "that guy". But these sorts of nuances just aren't born out in the statistics, so you just cannot simply say "Well, rape is not as bad as murder because you can just live a normal life afterwards" - no, just no. Stamp that idea out right the fuck now, it's so utterly wrong.
Re:Next, be a woman (Score:4, Insightful)
No, no they can't..
"Can" in this context does not mean "will". Yes, there are rape victims that kill themselves, but he's not saying anything against that.
I'd have a hard time buying the idea that the murder of a 70 year old man who lived a full life and who had terminal cancer and only 6 months to live is somehow worse for the victim than a woman that's had to live her life with non-stop memories
A rather contrived scenario. I too know without a doubt which victim I'd rather be. And that's alive, thank you very much, don't pick for me.
In contrast, a girl who slept with a guy and then changed her mind afterwards and then decided to cry rape, and lived in a country where that is legally acceptable to do so (Hi Sweden), probably wont have the slightest bit of trauma to suffer at all other than maybe a bit of regret about sleeping with "that guy"
Research have shown that people can suffer trauma from make-belief fantasies. Conversely people can be brutally abused and not suffer any trauma at all. People are complex, yes.
"Well, rape is not as bad as murder because you can just live a normal life afterwards" - no, just no. Stamp that idea out right the fuck now, it's so utterly wrong.
No it's utterly right. In fact, attitudes like these causes trauma in rape victims. Believing themselves to be damaged goods and worthless.
Alcohol (Score:3)
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The Economist article mentions that other studies have determined that alcohol is the most common factor in murders in Australia, Finland and Sweden.
This would not surprise me.
Australia, Finland and Sweden don't have significant problems with gangs or ethnic violence, however we do have very big drinking cultures. Drinking lowers inhibitions and makes it easy for someone predisposed towards violence to lose their head. Please note this is no excuse, in fact an Australian court is likely to be less lenient on you for killing whilst drunk.
Tongue-in-cheek (Score:2)
The Economist includes an intriguing 'print only interactive' (see the PDF) and has some tongue-in-cheek tips on how to avoid being slain:
<snip>...sit back and grow older
You're not kidding about the advice being tongue-in-cheek.
People In Honduras Must (Score:2)
a fact not mentioned: women kill more men, too (Score:4, Interesting)
At least in the US, women kill more men than women.
Also, while gender issues folks are more than happy to do all sorts of mental gymnastics for other things: nobody is willing to touch "why do men commit robbery more?" with a ten foot pole because then they'd have to admit that traditional gender roles for men are still very much in place, men are judged heavily by their economic status, and men are committing crime by and large to house, feed, and clothe their families.
Lots of assistance for single mothers out there, like WIC. Single dads? Shit outta luck.
Guess what percentage of the US homeless population is male? Depending on the area, anywhere from 67% to 80% (NYC, for example, is 82%.) Oh, and the percentage of women in homeless shelters is higher than the percentage of homeless women total, showing women are better served.
Male privilege, my ass.
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Or maybe it's simply due to the fact that men are, by nature, chemically different than women and more prone to getting involved in aggressive situations and less likely to accept a submissive role in accepting support from others?
Pretending men end up in these situations because of some bias in society is nonsense when there are well known natural factors that make men different to women in this exact respect.
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The story is about the odds of being murdered, and your first sentence was on topic.
The rest was deliriously offtopic. Hence the appropriate moderation, "offtopic". If you don't want to be modded offtopic, then your post should be substantially on topic.
To your on-topic point: I couldn't find a source to quantify your statistic in a short time, though I did find sources which explained that women are way less likely to murder non-family members than men are; and given that women are *way* more likely to
The data in ODS, with better layout (Score:2)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.... [dropboxusercontent.com]
I hate these numbers (Score:3)
I've said it before, so I'll say it again. These murder counts are totally useless for anyone who doesn't work in a morgue.
I really don't worry about *all* of the murders. The vast majority of them can't possibly affect me. I want the real number of murders -- the ones of which I ought to be frightened.
I don't care about gang-on-gang violence, I'm not in a gang. I do care about caught-in-crossfire gang-shooting victims.
I don't care about spouses killing spouses nor parents killing children. I don't fear my spouse nor my children.
What's left is a very small miniscule number, at least in my country, of intentional killings from random shootings, caught-in-crossfire, crazy co-workers, mistaken identities, and the like. But no one has ever presented those numbers.
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Usually, the people who whine about anonymous communication are the ones who want access to personal information so they can shut down commentary they don't like. If you cared about rational discussion, the arguments stand or fall regardless of the poster's identity.
Re:I hate these numbers (Score:5, Funny)
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Not that it's at all relevant to this conversation, but why would you think that my parents gave me that name? Names come from many places. Seems rather narrow-minded of you to assume any single source.
what that leaves out (Score:5, Informative)
What the UN report leaves out is one important factor in the US: about half of the perpetrators and victims of homicide are young African American males, completely out of proportion to their prevalence population; that's what accounts for most of the difference between US and other Western murder rates.
Gun control isn't going to help reduce those murder rates. Nor can those murder rates be explained through racism or bias in the justice system. Until politicians get serious and address this issue, African Americans are going to continue to get killed and locked up at a frightening rate. Unfortunately, our current president has been totally ineffective in doing anything about it.
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about half of the perpetrators and victims of homicide are young African American males, completely out of proportion to their prevalence population; that's what accounts for most of the difference between US and other Western murder rates.
That can't be true because looking at other "Western" nations (I looked at the Western Europe category, most of Northern Europe category, most of Southern Europe category, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) have about a quarter of the murder rates of the US fairly consistently over the 13 years indicated. In 2012, Canada, Finland, & Belgium are are closer to 1/3, but some are doing better than 1/5. And that was tied for the best year in the US. To be fair, that was a particularly good year for Finland a
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Well, looks like I didn't have to say any of what I have to say. So I'll say this instead.
Look to Louisville, KY for how bad things can get when we try to be desperately politically correct or try to sweep it all under the rug. The "teens" have formed a gang among three+ schools and have exceeded the capacity of the police there. Oddly, only a small number of arrests have been made and of those they do not fit the profile of the "teens." Meanwhile, among the terror and chaos, the mayor essentially says
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Norway and Finland are about 2.3/100000, which is about the same rate as for non-Hispanic white Americans. And you're right that that is about twice what it is for some other countries in Western Europe, but the point is that US society as a whole isn't unreasonably homicidal (in fact, several states have murder rates of 1.1-1.8). High US murder rates are a problem of specific, small minorities, and we need to intervene in those populations if we want to reduce overall homicide rates.
And murder rates among
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Drilling down deeper (Score:5, Interesting)
I would also point out that the "US" - commonly condemned in such statistics - is probably the least homogenous country in the world. As such, it's probably useful to look at the state by state rankings, both positively and negatively:
(ranked by deaths per 100k)
1. District of Columbia 30.8 http://www.city-data.com/forum...
Also (Score:3)
Yay Canada! (Score:4, Insightful)
Canada = 1.4-1.8/100k
U.S. = 4.7-6.6/100k
It's amazing how some people will defend the American way of life while being completely blind to the American way of death.
Crime in America (Score:3)
I have generally found that most foreigners and immigrants have a much harsher perspective on handling crime than Americans. Many developed countries engage in law enforcement activity that Americans would consider the mark of a police state. I've found most of those people, however, find it outrageous that Americans would be so obsessed with perceived freedom that they'd be willing to sacrifice quality of life and overall safety. The difference is that they're focused on prevention whereas American obsess about deterrence via punishment.
I'm not arguing they're right necessarily but it's hard to argue when cities in most first world nations are safer than American cities. I was generally oblivious to this until I lived in Taiwan for several years. It was refreshing to be able to go out at 3am and not have to worry about being mugged. Not that there weren't problems, particularly in Southern Taiwan and especially seedy neighborhoods. And sometimes I suspect crime in other countries in under reported. There's a lot of petty crime that I think is not adequately represented. But even then it's nothing compared to how rough things can get in the US. And to think that Japan somehow manages to be on another level.
Crime also doesn't tell the whole story. In Taiwan, if you really had to go looking for trouble. Otherwise no one gave you a hard time, even as a foreigner. In America, however, wander into certain neighborhoods with the wrong skin color and it's a near inevitability you'll get harassed. And usually the harassment comes from some punk teenager, which is a bit of a concerning trend. Where I used to live in the US was a borderline neighborhood that straddled the line between okay and bad neighborhoods. A week didn't go by that some asshole didn't make remarks about me, as a white guy, being out for a jog.
Inevitably, you learn to avoid trouble areas and I think Americans as a culture do that constantly. The problem is that it's the equivalent to sweeping the problem under the rug. And Americans seem to have a habit of reinterpreting statistics to suit some deluded world view. Take incarceration stats. People look at the numbers and assume there's some grand conspiracy. Doesn't it occur to people that more people are in jail because there's generally more crime? Certainly, the crime statistics corroborate that.
Now, the interesting thing I've found, is that American police departments are far more militaristic than anything I've seen overseas. In Taiwan, more than once I've seen a drunk woman slap a police officer and he just stands there and takes it, waiting for her to calm down. In the US they would have tased her and smashed her face into the pavement, assuming someone more gung ho didn't just pump a few rounds into her claiming probable cause.
On the other hand, I found the authorities there much more comfortable with continued surveillance. Here, it's all reactionary aggression. The rare police car I see is busy blowing through stop lights supposedly on the way to an incident. In Taiwan, however police presence was more persistent and reliable. Not that cops were personable there, but there was a lot more interaction. The only time people ever see cops in America, other than directing traffic, is when something has gone wrong. No wonder people develop a negative impression.
If I had to attribute crime in America with a cause, I think the single largest problem is irresponsible and shit parenting. If that were addressed I think so many other things would start falling into place. There are so many cultural problems endemic to America that you just don't see overseas, at least not to the extent they exist here.
Fixed, with better layout (Score:5, Informative)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.... [dropboxusercontent.com]
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Try this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.... [dropboxusercontent.com]
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With proprietary data, you never can tell really. Compatibility is never nearly as good as advertised. The idea that government should be transparent, or that Robber Barons shouldn't be free to run amok and charge tools every 5 miles is not a new idea. Nor is it one unique to "open source fundementalists".
You were unintentionally funny when you came up with that.
Biff would be proud.
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The bigger question you need to ask is why is the US so far behind its first world brethren?
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Depends on the countries methodology on "homicide" because in one country and another the methodology aren't the same. And organizations are sloppy at going through a year or even several years worth of data to adjust it. My personal favorite was always the suicide and sexual assault numbers. Europeans love to fudge the SA numbers by reclassifying the crimes, and Japan loves to fudge suicide incidents as "not suicide."
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not poverty, instead places where family structure has broken down and subcultures do not instill any respect for human life. I know places where poor people are not killing each other. poverty is no excuse
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You can speculate on the root cause of murder, but simple demographic data explains the different numbers between the US and other developed countries.
The fact is that everywhere, homicide rates differ dramatically by age, gender, race and ethnicity. Some countries show bigger variation than the US does.
If you control for those variables, the difference mostly goes away.
e.g. compare data for whites of the same age and gender to Western Europe, US Hispanics to Latin America, or African Americans to Africans,
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No offense, but us bleeding hearts also blither on quite a bit about income inequality. I think we blither on about that a lot more than we do about gun control, actually.
Re:shenanigans (Score:4, Funny)
Guns don't kill people. Gun-obsessed people kill people.
(I suspect the high velocity lumps of lead may play a part too.)
Re:shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, which is why you always see mass shootings at gun shows, gun stores, and gun ranges where there's lot of guns, lots of ammunition, and lots of gun-obsessed people.
Thankfully, there are some places where that sort of thing isn't tolerated, like schools, malls, and US Postal offices. Ahh yes, gun-free zones, where violence is a thing of the past.
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Re:shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a moment, are you saying that there are people who might ignore the gun-free zone signs and carry a gun anyway? What kind of person would even think of doing such a thing?
But your point is well taken. I think the best way to go is to stop everyone but the police and the military from carrying guns, just like they do in Mexico. Then we could enjoy Mexico's legendarily low violent crime rate right here in the United States.
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I think the best way to go is to stop everyone but the police and the military from carrying guns, just like they do in Mexico.
That's odd, I haven't noticed an increase in local warlords since we implemented similar hand gun laws here in Oz about 25yrs ago. It's definitely a cultural thing, hand guns have never been popular in Oz or the UK. Even when they were legal if you claimed you needed a gun to protect yourself you were seen by "polite society" as a either thug or a coward, probably both. This is also reflected in Australian law since "self defence" is no longer a valid reason to own a gun, "hunting" and "sport" are ok. Under
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In the US, there is very little correlation between gun ownership and murder rate. Many states like New Hampshire and Utah have very liberal (=loose) gun laws and not much murder. Others like Mississippi have loose gun laws and lots of murder; still others like Washington DC have very restrictive gun laws and lots of murder.
Re:shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because the U.N. is known for shoddy science.
The data files include the source of the figures, generally reported by the WHO instead of the national police in those countries where the official figures may be suspect. If there are official complaints about the figures, they'll likely come from the ambassador of Bananazuela who will claim that the figures for his tourist-friendly country are too high.
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The Venezuelan government hasn't published violence statistics for years, so NGOs and journalists query the morgues every week. But that doesn't stop the nomenklatura from denouncing the state governed by the most prominent opposition candidate as having "the most murders" (it's not clear, and not too relevant, whether they mean count or rate).
Re:shenanigans (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the places where this is a problem are the less developed countries, ones where the data is already suspect for different reasons anyway, and where the numbers are often already high. The really enlightening bits are comparing the first world countries, all of whom have a very similar definition of murder (this is actually much better than generic"violent crime" stats where definitions do vary largely)
What really stands out is that most of the first world countries fall in a range of 1-2 murders per 100000 people per year, except the USA which is more than double that. Always amazing to see how different the USA is than other countries that should be so similar (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, even England) and how the public opinion in the USA is so against any efforts at improving the situation (better education. Health care for all, less inequality, gun control, all the things that have proven to work in the rest of the western world)
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If you read my post, I didn't point the blame "just at guns", in fact they were last on my list after education, health care, and inequality. However now that you bring it up,. Evidence from the rest of the world indicates that guns are a problem, not a solution. I'm not willing to say how much of an effect they have, as I believe that it is the culture, more than the firearms themselves that is the problem, the guns are just a symptom of that culture.
Why the USA is so determined to avoid universal health
Re:shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. falls into the category of large, moderately urbanized countries with large open borders to less industrialized countries, high wealth and wealth disparity, and ethnically diverse populations. Most of the western world is not that way at all, and those properties breed the root cause of the majority of violent crime in those countries, which is the illegal drug trade.
Countries that share those features include Russia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and China. Surprise, surprise, those other countries are all at least or much worse off then the U.S. is, despite some having the strictest gun ownership laws in the world (Russia), all having socialized healthcare, and the US. Actually having a pretty good education system for most of the country (not underserved inner-city areas) when reported the same way other countries are.
China is the outlier, in that it does not have either high violent crime rates or a violent drug trade, but my theory is that this is because the vast majority of the country lives in squalor and acts as a buffer to help shield the cities, and those cities have their crime rates dilutes by the shield.
Simple facts are that gun control reduces gun crime but increase violent crime. Education and healthcare raise the standard of living, but don't provide disincentive for crime in the drug trade. You are right about inequality as a facet of this.
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My bad, I'll stop confusing the USA with a first world country.
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It wasn't me who compared the USA to China, Mexico, and Russia, countries with massive social problems, including poverty like you have never seen or experienced.
I wanted to give the USA the benefit of the doubt and compare them to countries with very similar demographics, diversity, and physical characteristics. You decided that was too much to aspire to, and that the USA should be content because it's better then China, Mexico, and Russia. Use whatever terms you want to describe it, but I think you could
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Simple facts are that gun control reduces gun crime but increase violent crime.
Simple facts sound rather questionable to me. Your argument about the unique circumstances is specious as well. The biggest problem your borders have is leaking guns to other countries.
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The US has inner cities with high crime rates that skew the average, Not only are these inner cities majority black, which makes these statistics very politically incorrect, they also have the strictest gun laws in the country.
If you don't live in one of those places (whatever your skin color), you don't really need to worry about the "high USA crime rate", And we don't have universal health care outside them any more than we do in them, either.
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Japan being an island and South Korea for all intents and purposes being an island(their northern border isn't exactly what I would call "porous") has allowed them to strictly enforce drug imports because there are very very few places where
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or we could decriminalize drugs and let the users kill themselves quietly with their habit.. There would be no need for them to rob anyone.
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Re:shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
The US murder rate is more than double that of the rest of the western world. Despite the four points I listed being the biggest differences between your country and the other Western democracies. Your personal refusal to even consider any possible improvement in that situation is endemic of the problem that causes your chance of being murdered to be more than double that of any other western citizen.
I'm glad you're OK with your odds, after all, you choose them.
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It's easier to govern countries that are basically monocultures. Socialism works better when the average citizen fits in the same square hole as the next. The US is not like that. The irony is that it's usually western europeans who dump on americans for being 'intolerant' of 'diversity' when said europeans have never lived it.
Re:shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:shenanigans (Score:4, Interesting)
The difference is that the ethnic diversity in Europe looks different than it does in the US: in Europe, it's because of immigration. Folks generally don't cross an ocean to then shit on the society they've come to join. Sure enough there's really not that much violence in most immigrant communities in the US. I used to live in the slums of Baltimore, and finally moved to a new apartment in DC. I got to the laundry room and saw a lady in there speaking Spanish to her daughter, and thought "Alrighty, if the immigrants have come here, this is a decent place." I was right.
But the highest crime rate in the US is in the black enclaves in the inner cities. That population was never an immigrant community; it's the descendants of former slaves. We (the American whites) did horrible things to them, and then after emancipation continued to do horrible things to them in part of the country while not really doing enough to facilitate the integration of the liberated slaves and their descendants into society. By the time we passed the Civil Rights Act there were endemic social problems in the US black community, to the point that there's a long and very respectful Department of Labor study into them (the Moynihan Report).
So now in the US those black enclaves have a sky-high murder rate, and the rest of the country has a pretty low one (broadly similar to Europe's). Why? A whole constellation of historical and cultural reasons, many of them traceable back to horrid racism years ago. Should we still blame whitey for the problems? Is it slavery's fault that kids in the ghetto kill each other for silly reasons and don't want to learn to read and write? I dunno.
But saying simply "Europe has diversity too" misses the point: the non-white folks in Europe are there because they came there and wanted to be European, for the most part. (This is pretty similar to Asian-Americans, a group with a low crime rate.) That has vastly different cultural effects than hauling people's ancestors over in chains and wrecking their society.
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And yet the simple solutions to these problems are ignored and shunned by americans. "Blacks" kill more people because they are on average poorer, with less access to a quality education and limited access to health care (three of the top 4 items I listed that are different in the USA from the rest of the developed world)
"preventing crime" does NOT mean more cops or more guns, it does not mean more laws, or "tough on crime" legislation, it means getting to the root of the problems and solving those.
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when said europeans have never lived it.
You do realise there are 27 nations in the EU, dozens of different languages and hundreds if not thousands of provinces, all of whom have been at war with each other for at least the last 2000yrs. Agree the US is far more diverse than most non-American's realise but it's diversity was inherited from Europe, not only via the early settlers, but also the gold rush days, and the two world wars.
Re:shenanigans (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll never get americans to give up their guns: they're all too afraid. What are they so scared of? Yup, all the (other) people with guns. The comments about gun shops and firing ranges being the "safest" places demonstrates this very well. The gun-owners feel safest when surrounded by guns. However when they are out in the big, nasty, world they feel insecure that other people might have weapons they can't see, so the urge to protect themselves becomes very strong.
Obviously, if nobody in the USA had a gun, this level of fear should be reduced, but it's irrational and doesn't work like that. Hence they all keep their guns and that induces more fear - so they feel the need for more and bigger guns, just as a sort of "safety blanket" (as almost none of them are ever fired in the real world) - which, of course, escalates the problem.
It's all because they're all so scared of each other.
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The US is not a first-world country, nor is it a third-world country. It's a first-world country with pockets of third-world society in it: the inner cities of Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, Chicago, and the like. Grandparent's odds of being killed, assuming he lives outside of these places, are rather similar to what they would be in Europe. (I used to live in inner-city Baltimore -- not the worst part of the city, but a pretty bad one, the sort where you have to shoo the junkies out of your car so you c
Caviar for all. (Score:3)
It's been said that the measure of a nation is fo
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Afghanistan actually was doing better than the USA until 2012. And Iran is still better. As is Egypt. So I'm actually thinking it's more like:
[Places where there are wars or massive corruption, including the USA]
[The rest of the world]
Too bad Americans fight tooth and nail against anything that could help improve their odds. (Education, health care, income equality, gun control)