Unfortunately, we get a shooting I'd say around once every week to 2 week's, sometimes multiple deaths in just one shooting case. Just in December 2014 we had a recorded 12 homicides. You eventually just get used to hearing it on the news.
Where I grew up, Philly-area, they once announced on the evening news that there had been no murders that day. They used to have around 500 per year. Now its much less.
Over the past few years London's homicide rate has ranged from 83 to around 140 homicides per year according to Wikipedia, and one year over 200 were reported. That's still lower than most US cities, but not what I would call rare.
Ander, London is a very big city so those numbers are still very low compared with these ones. The 140 you quote is 1.59 homicides per 100,000. So, not just lower but tiny in comparison.
nice to see that nyc is not on the list. that's where i live and every morning when you turn on ur tv, u'll see a bunch of reports of shootings and murders and all that stuff. also, all of these cities are in the east coast or else in central but never in the west. seems like its safer there. im considering moving there. =/
All American cities are safe if you use common sense, mind your own business, and don't go out of your way to do something stupid in a rough neighborhood. The west coast is nice but you could still get yourself killed if you wanted to go pick a fight with some gang bangers in Los Angeles or Oakland or San Diego.
Guns are certainly part of the problem. Just not the whole problem. There are countries (South Africa, Jamaica, El Salvador) with much higher murder rates than the USA that have much fewer guns per capita (none have more), as well as countries with very high numbers of firearms (Switzerland, Canada) where the murder rate is tiny. As well as countries with a lot of guns and a similar murder rate (Yemen).
By some ways of measuring (check WHO stats), there are countries as developed as the USA with higher murder and violent crime rates (the UK), but not that many, and none that have anywhere near as many gun-related deaths. It is a complex issue, more complex than both supporters and opponents of gun control like to make it out to be.
Wealth inequality is another thing that seems at first glance like it may be correlated... but while the USA ranks near the top of the list in this category, both Switzerland and Denmark have more wealth inequality and almost no homicides. Switzerland has a ton of guns, Denmark has almost none. On the other hand, Yemen has very very high wealth equality, and Jamaica ranks better than Canada or Singapore. So again, it can't be the whole story.
ander, moose: drugs and gangs play a very big part. When I said that by the WHO's way of measuring, the UK has more murder and violent crime than the USA, that's because the WHO doesn't include gang-related violence in the intentional homicide rate.
This also plays into what I was saying earlier about safety and common sense. If you don't join a gang in one of these cities, or try to sell drugs on someone else's turf, or do something to provoke a gang, probably you can go your whole life without seeing any violent crime perpetrated in front of you.
Are you sure about that, Gandalf? I'd heard the same thing before. But I met a guy from Switzerland in Sofia recently, and we were having a discussion about gun control along with some gunsmith from St Louis that had been volunteering with the Peshmerga. Swiss guy said that this was not true, and that nobody is required to have a firearm in his country. ::shrug::
I'm pretty sure most of these murders are used with other weapons than guns, like knives. And most of the time when it is a murder with a gun, it's a firearm that has been obtained illegally.
"Wealth inequality is another thing that seems at first glance like it may be correlated... but while the USA ranks near the top of the list in this category, both Switzerland and Denmark have more wealth inequality and almost no homicides."
Where did you get this info? Because from what I found, the wealth inequality index for Denmark is about 28 (making it one of the top 20 countries when it comes to wealth equality), Switzerland 32 and USA 41, making it the least equal out of the three (and not by such a small number either).
I agree that wealth inequality isn't the ONLY problem America has in regards to violence, but don't twist reality.
Cray's stats are for income inequality, whereas kal's are for wealth inequality. I'm not sure why they would be different, or which is more important. Maybe the correlation is in income inequality. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality should give all the necessary evidence.
Thank you for those definitions. I already knew that. I just mean that income is be heavily correlated with wealth, so it is surprising that one of the more equal nations in income is one of the less equal ones in wealth. My suggestion was that maybe income inequality has more of a correlation with murder rate, and was wondering why it might be.
"All American cities are safe if you use common sense, and stay out of them" - Fixed that for you.
I grew up in Detroit. I knew a handful of people who were minding their own business and shot by mistaken identity or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of my coworkers was shot 9 times from just a few feet away (and survived) while he was playing with his 3 year old son at a playground. The shooter reportedly thought he was someone else. It's not just me, look at any newspaper and you see tons of people shot by police for things like calling for help (Justine Dammond) or having a broken tail light (Philando Castile). The midwestern cities are death traps and if you don't know that, I assume you never lived in a big midwestern city long enough to make any friends.
New York City has some impressively low crime statistics. Homicide rate is only 3.4 per 100000 people! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City
The reason is simple @ihaveanewname. The government source is badly designed and doesn't even have a URL that can be easily referenced. The fact that you yourself didn't post the official source is evidence that Wikipedia might be better in this case.
Age of building stock might actually have something to do with it.
There is a well established correlation between violent crime rates and lead exposure as a child. It's uncanny how crime rates plummet as lead exposure drops. A lot of the affordable housing supply in older cities is still full of lead paint and has lead service lines for water. Western cities have expanded much more recently and are significantly less likely to have either.
And I went with southern cities and rust belt cities (which also have a large "southern" population arriving during the great migration of the early 20th century).
This was an interesting quiz! The rates seemed so high I had to check what is the murder rate for US in total. According to Wikipedia it's 4.8. Not even close to these top cities but anyway quite high for a developed country, compared to Western Europe (0.9), Eastern Asia (1.0), Australasia (1.1) or even the neighbour Canada (1.6).
@fuanacdc: such airtight logic!! I guess we should legalize or decriminalize things like rape, theft and murder as well, right? Because... what's the use? Criminals won't follow the laws anyway! There's just no point trying.
Though SophR is actually correct. If you throw out gang-related murders in both countries (which occur more in the US.. spillover from Latin American drug gangs mostly), the UK has a higher murder rate than the US and a much higher rate of assault, robbery, and various other violent crimes. They just use knives and clubs and whatnot.
Why would you take out the gang-related crime? Dead is dead, regardless of who pulled the trigger. Also, the major Latin-American gangs were founded in the USA and exported to Latin America, so their crimes can't be attributed to foreigners. Aaaannnd...the rate of violent crime in the UK is nowhere near the rate of the United States. It's not only not in the same ballpark, it's a completely different sport. This was a claim made by some TV person a few years back and repeated ad infinitum by the US gun lobby but, like many of the claims made by the US gun lobby, it's not true. The way the UK records violent crime is so very different from the way the US records violent crime that it's difficult to make a comparison. All that is certain is that violent crime in the USA is much worse than in the UK.
@Wombat: I guess because most people know if they're in a gang or not and it's their choice? I'm talking about gang-on-gang violence. I didn't compile those stats and they had nothing to do with the gun lobby. I've walked through Baltimore and London before in the middle of the night and felt perfectly safe both places. However, I think last year I was trying to find those same stats again and couldn't locate them. So.. ::shrug:: You really have to go out of your way either place most of the time to be the victim of violent crime.
Although it's worth pointing out that the US suicide rate is almost double the UK rate. An often overlooked effect of access to weapons is suicide, not homicide. Complex issue for the people of the US to tackle, not helped by politicians more interested in their campaign finances than actual informed debate. Too many politicians use Second Amendment rights as a fig leaf.
But those statistics are also hysterically pointed to and exaggerated by people who think they mean something, when in reality, your chances of getting shot are miniscule in either location. It makes sense to point this out. I mean... I meet so many people who actually believe the USA is dangerous. Which is just insane. I have to laugh out loud when they ask me.. is it safe to travel to so and so? I lived in the country almost 30 years and never once did I witness so much as someone being slapped in public, much less gunned down. I had some British friends come to Florida and we were playing basketball outside. Every time a car started driving up the street they would get skittish because they expected a drive-by shooting. Saying "much higher risk" makes it sound like there is a real and salient difference, which is just dumb.
To put this in real terms, if you are a British tourist visiting the United States, to pull stats from one particularly murderous year (4 British tourists killed out of about 5 million), your chances of being killed on your trip are about 0.0000008%.
To pick out another particularly murderous year in British history (1 American tourist killed out of 1.3 million), then your chances of being killed on a trip to the UK is 0.00000078%.
So... a difference of 0.00000002%. Wow. Staggering difference. You're right, Drunken Gandalf. The US is practically a warzone.
While I disagree with the use of statistics to support a claim that they don't actually relate to, and think it is dangerously stupid to believe that it is unsafe to travel to the USA because of the murder rate, I disagree with excluding gang violence in murder statistics. If you exclude certain types of murder on the grounds that "it doesn't affect the average person", then you will need to exclude pretty much all murder. If you are putting together statistics advising people about which countries to visit based on murder rates, you should exclude murders committed by a family member or spouse or ex-spouse. These constitute the majority of murders in many countries. Keep it simple. A murder is a murder.
It depends what you're worried about. If you are a traveller deciding which countries to go to based on murder rate, basically stop basing your decision based on that. It's pretty pointless because the probability is tiny wherever you go (possibly with some exceptions that don't include the US or the vast majority of Europe). If, on the other hand, you are a public policy maker wanting to devise a system whereby crime can be prevented, then reducing the murder rate fivefold (which is approximately the difference between the rates in the US and UK, for example) is a useful achievement because it actually is a significant release of burden on the justice system and prisons (or in some parts of the US, and Belarus, executioners). It is possible for the difference in probability to be negligible while the differences in the actual numbers are not.
It's true that there is no reason to fear going to the US because of murder rates or gun laws, but the numbers of shootings are something that needs to be addressed. You may only have a minuscule chance of being shot, but it is still a problem that anyone is.
Kalbahamut, you seem to have lived in very secluded circles if you never saw anyone even slapped in public in 30 years, let alone never knowing people who were murdered or were murderers. Baffling.
someone: and I would say you sound like someone who cavorts with gangsters and criminals or lives some place very much more dangerous than the USA... I grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC and spent a lot of time in the city. I then moved to Richmond, CA, outside of San Francisco. One of the highest-crime districts of the Bay area. I moved up to Davis, CA, and commuted to Sacramento where I worked for the next year and a half. When I moved back to Virginia my cousin was living in Baltimore, another city on the above list, and I'd go up to see him regularly. Also spent a non-negligible amount of time in Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, New York, Chicago, Youngstown, and Los Angeles. I'm not kidding. I've never seen anyone struck in public aside from small children being spanked by their parents, and even that is rare. I don't know any murderers. Again... what kind of circles do YOU hang out in? You know a lot of murderers?
Closest person to me that I can think of who was murdered would maybe be the older brother of my sort-of friend Jeanette, who was a friend of a friend I knew 20 years ago. I had a bit of a crush on her. We hung out together about six or seven times in total.
There was also Erin, whom I went on dates with two or three times. Does that count as knowing someone? She was on the news because she was in a classroom that the Virginia Tech shooter tried to break in to. She wasn't murdered, though. Just... murder adjacent.
I used to work in the Emergency Department at a hospital that was the only Trauma-1 center in the greater Washington DC metro area, we had patients flown in from all over, and even there it was very rare that we'd receive victims of gang violence or attempted murder. I remember one guy who came in as a stabbing victim. In the two years that I worked there that was about it. Several gunshot victims but mostly self-inflicted.
Overseas I was assaulted and hospitalized myself in Ukraine. I worked with a guy who lost two fingers trying to defend against a knife-wielding thug in Bahrain. I knocked over a guy who punched me randomly on the street, also in Bahrain. I'm struggling to remember a bar fight or something like that... honestly can't think of any specific ones. But I've spent a lot of time hanging out at pretty scuzzy bars in Thailand. I've walked alone through the slums of Manila and the shanty towns of Addis Ababa. Drove all over Eastern Europe by myself. Lived in East Jerusalem for a while in late 2014 when there was a spate of terrorists driving cars into crowded bus and rail stops; but I never saw that. Used to go out clubbing a lot in downtown Seoul and Tokyo and Bangkok and London. Lived on the wrong side of the tracks in Thessaloniki. I don't think many people would call me "secluded" that's pretty novel. Again, where do YOU live that you know so many murderers? That's bizarre.
kalbahamut I agree with most of the comments you've made but you also have to consider each person on an individual basis. If I was going to rob somebody I would make sure it was a short or small person. Why take the risk of them overpowering me even if I have a weapon? Although I don't know if there would be statistics for crime based on victim height/size. You seem to have been to a lot of 'dangerous' places. Could it be that you have walked past a potential robber who thought to himself "That's not worth the risk" ?
Quite possible and I'm not denying this relative privilege of mine. But, still, I've met many petite females in my travels who have led a similar lifestyle to mine and could say basically the same things that I typed above.
I'm pretty sure it's Kansas City, MO, that made the list, not Kansas City, KS. I know they're connected, but there is still technically a difference. (I live in KC, too. Kansas side).
Small, constrictive city limit areas effect numbers greatly too. Overall, an urban area where the flowery suburbs are legally part of the city lowers the numbers versus a city that is legally just the dumpy center.
It's strange, Cleveland and Cincinnati have high murder rates and are shrinking cities. Columbus is growing and it's not on the list. They must be doing something right there.
I typed NYC at first, and then was surprised to see that it is not. I watch many crime dramas, and many of them are based in NYC. It makes no sense to me that NYC is not on there.
Impressive that NYC and LA managed to remove themselves from the list entirely. Even 20 or 30 years ago, they would have featured prominently. Surprised that Chicago is so low on the list.
Many people might think Chicago has a really high murder rate, but those people are very wrong. Many people somehow have this strange impression of Chicago as a poor, ugly, war-torn, criminal ridden, gloomy city (I'm not saying you are one of these people, Grafakos. It's just that you reminded me of them and that they do exist). But I am from Chicago, and it is nothing like that. Few murders or criminal acts of any kind have occurred close to where I live. People in my neighborhood were surprised, sad, and confused when there was even one shooting in the area, and that was when the shooting was done by police to a person they weren't trying to kill. I have been around the city a lot, and other neighborhoods are just the same in that aspect. In Chicago, we don't worry much about criminals because there aren't many to worry about. And for the gloomy and gray part, that's very wrong. We have many plants, and colorful, beautiful, well built stuff. Chicago is great compared to other cities.
I hear this sentiment from all of my friends who live in Chicago as well...problem is, those people are middle-upper class white people with college educations. They aren't living in the parts of Chicago that are completely riddled with gang violence. So no, i'm sure you believe your little corner of Chicago is quite peaceful and lovely, but that doesn't mean that your city as a whole doesn't have a HUGE problem. Ignoring it because it's "Not In My Backyard" doesn't make it not exist.
Lol this whole argument about USA vs UK is ridiculous. If we're talking about murder then why are you excluding gang murders etc? Just because a gang did it doesn't mean it didn't happen! Someone still died...
It wasn't an argument. You see it that way because of the emotional response your defensiveness provokes upon reading something that challenges your preconceptions.
St. Louis is #1 for the year 2014 with a 14.6% increase in murders from 2011. It's almost as if something happened in the St. Louis area in 2014 that caused a spike in the murder rate. I wonder what it could possibly be?
These rates are for the city proper only. Within the city limits, there are only just over 300,000 people and a total are of only 66 square miles. Because the per capita murder rate is only rated for wihin the city limits, and most of the crime happens within those city limits, the numbers are not representative of the greater St. Louis region. The entire metro area has about 2.8 million people.
Michael brown had nothing to do with murder rate changing in stlouis. It’s horrible politicians especially AGs that are soft on crime. Not sure if u live here but We have a City/County system. The rate gets higher as fewer people live in the city and move to the county. Cause it’s not the bangers and addicts that are able to afford to leave the city for the county.
I think somewhere in those long comments there's an application for joining Kal's cult! ;) ...can always rely on you, Kal, for substantial and thorough input :D
These numbers aren't really a perfect measure of how safe a city is. It depends on how the city boundaries are defined - maybe the official Philadelphia city boundaries include more suburbs than Pittsburgh. I definitely agree with your sentiment though - I live in Pittsburgh and it always seems very safe to me. It depends on which part of the city you're in though. I was in the Hill District at night a few months ago and it was pretty sketchy.
Glad to see Buffalo's on the upswing, so shouldn't their change percentage been in green now because it's negative, like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh? (And kudos to all you Buffalonians out there for killing each other a full 26% less last year!)
So does this count the muslim in Orlando who killed around 50 people? Orlando has over a 400% increase since last year so I'm assuming this is the case. I wonder how much the single incident skewed the stats.
Of this list, 80% of the cities are east of the Mississippi River---and if you include St Louis which is right ON the river, it goes to 85%. Tulsa, Kansas City & Oakland are the only west cities. Rocky Mountain States: -0-. Rocky Mountain High, for sure.
Love that this featured on the day I'm moving to Baltimore. My friend was googling this list just a few hours ago and listed the cities... I still did poorly
Interestingly enough, whereas cities/states that vote Republican traditionally score worse on the "Least Educated States", most of these metro areas are predominantly Democrat in voting (not trying to argue, just presenting an interesting observation)
All urban areas tend to vote more Democratic than the surrounding rural areas. And here we've got cities from Missouri, Louisiana, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky... not exactly known for their Democratic party support. Though Democratic-leaning states tend to have more large cities, the list is dominated by cities in Republican-leaning states. Also not trying to argue, but your observation perhaps isn't interesting in the way you thought it was.
St. Louis city votes almost entirely Democrat. Most of the crime happens within the city limits. So that argument doesn't work for the "most dangerous" city in America.
Which part of "not trying to argue" did you not understand? Are you imagining things that I didn't and wouldn't say so that you have something to argue against? Or do you not know what a state is?
I live in NJ & I'm in Newark all the time. It sure doesn't feel like a murder capital there. I know the crime is concentrated in a few wards, generally towards Irvington, but I don't hesitate to go to a Devils hockey game or to the Ironbound district for dinner or lunch. So the areas I don't see have to be in really, really bad shape.
Koala, even though those drugs gangs were formed in the US they were formed by foreigners from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala so in a way they they were from a foreign source.
I look at rate of sexual crimes, especially rape, in assessing a place's safety. Murder gets all the headlines but sexual violence is extremely devastating to individuals, families and communities.
Cities' sexual violence statistics do not seem to be especially correlative to their murder rates. Many cities may not have tons of murders, but are very dangerous places for sexual violence.
It's really amazing how statistically safe New York City is these days, especially given its history.
problem judging a lot of places that have high rates of rape is that this, more often than not, means that more rapes are reported, not that more rapes are committed. These places often have a culture and law enforcement that are more supportive toward victims and more aggressive at prosecuting offenders. In many places where rapes are severely underreported victims may feel that there's no point.
There is a striking similarity between these answers and answers on some other quiz with a different topic that I did a couple of days ago, but nevermind... :)
Sadly, it would seem that protests against police brutality in St. Louis, Baltimore, Chicago have led to a decrease in the police presence in those areas, and a corresponding increase in murders. There needs to be a more constructive dialogue to decrease the amount of police brutality while also acknowledging the incredibly stressful job that officers are asked to perform.
The city of Irvine California (population 288,052) had NO murders in 2018.
New York City had a murder rate of 3.46. This is down from a peak of 30.7 in 1990.
Vinita Park, Missouri (murder rate 118.1) was the most dangerous city with a population over 10,000. The introductory sentence of their website says "Vinita Park is a Safe City". Wow.
Think things in St. Louis are bad? Just be glad you don't live in East St. Louis (murder rate 86.4)
As a resident of St. Louis, I want to clear up some things about St Louis. There are certain areas in St Louis which are incredibly dangerous, and every local knows exactly where those areas are. Almost every suburb is very safe, and many parts of the city are too. Ask a local where not to go and we will give you very specific instructions. St Louis as a whole gets a bad rap from a small amount of incredibly dangerous areas.
The common link is .............................................................................................................................Democrats !
Some nonsense on here - the UK has one fifth the murder rate of the US. and around 35 times fewer gun murders
Violent crime is more complicated - because what is counted as a violent crime varies greatly between countries.
The correlation between levels of gun ownership and gun violence is exceptionally clear. It is not the only factor - but in countries that are in other ways similar - wealth, democracy etc..., those with more guns have more gun deaths
High murder rates do not necessarily mean these cities as a whole are unsafe. Chicago, for instance, is an exceptionally safe city as long as you stay out of the really bad parts. The overwhelming majority of murders are committed in two small clusters of neighborhoods, one on the West Side and one on the South Side. Those areas are absolute war zones, and their murders count as much as any other, but they're mostly committed in gang wars, and nobody would ever wander into those neighborhoods by accident. The North Side, downtown, and near west and near south sides (basically anywhere a visitor would go) are all very safe. I'm sure this is true of other cities on this list. That's not to belittle the horrific violence in those neighborhoods or the people there who have to deal with it, but those neighborhoods really skew the stats. I've lived here eight years, and the only crime victims I know are all from the same very distressed West Side neighborhood.
I read a Malcolm Gladwell book ("Talking to Strangers") recently that talks about this... there's really no such thing as violent cities or even violent neighborhoods, just violent street segments/blocks. The majority of violent crimes take place in very specific locations. Even in neighborhoods often considered crime-ridden, most areas are safe. To borrow a statistic from the book, in Minneapolis, 3.3% of street segments are responsible for more than 50% of police calls. It's not clear exactly what makes those spots special, but it's worth remembering statistics like that before generalizing entire cities as "violent."
Got almost all of these, but was really surprised St Louis was so high, and that Indianapolis even made the list. All major cities have rough neighborhoods but those two surprised me. Haven't been there in some time things must have really went downhill.
The only cities that have never had an nfl team in their city are milwaukee, memphis, louisville (and maybe newark if you don't count MetLife stadium), does that mean American football increases homicidal thoughts? lol
According to this source, which I'm pretty sure is accurate, but maybe I can't read, Tulsa has a rate of 7.9 per 100k. Baton Rouge, on the other hand, has a rate of 14.9 per 100k; although, these might be based on MSA instead of city proper. Not sure which the quiz is referring to.
Calls to "defund the police," which started a couple months ago, have not led to actual legislation or meaningful changes in policy anywhere. Don't be ridiculous. If it ever does lead to that, it doesn't mean that police forces would be abolished or underfunded. It means that resources the currently go to police would be refocused, and that the mission of police would be narrowed to things that they are trained for.
But obviously it was going to have a negative effect on police morale and an emboldening effect on criminals to have a nationwide anti-police and anti-policing movement. Also, there have actually been a substantial number of policy changes that may play a role, including in some cases defunding (though a small percentage of budget). In many cities across the country, DAs became much less aggressive and more focused on decarceration. New York and other states changed their bail laws. Several cities also abolished specific anti-crime or anti-gang units.
I don't know of convincing evidence that those changes had a major effect, but there definitely were real policy changes away from tough criminal enforcement.
Fast forward to 2022 and Republicans are now, unironically and literally, calling to defund the police. Specifically the FBI and the IRS. To protect the persecuted minority of billionaires named Donald Trump. The country gets more and more insane with every passing year...
i live in cleveland and every day i hear police alarms and ambulances firetrucks but sometimes it is a robbery or a homeless person dying but atleast every 2 weeks or 1 week someone gets murdered
The population is much higher in those areas. Except for Chicago, all these cities are middle range population areas of the US. About the tv shows, that is because those tv shows are mainly done in 3 areas of the US; Los Angeles, New York and Miami. Now if the quiz was about actual number of murders in cities in the US, then Miami, Los Angeles and New York would be in the top 5 most likely. There are few other places in Texas, California and Florida that might be in there as well along with Chicago.
There's also the fact that a lot of America's large cities have become significantly more prosperous and safer since the 1970s - New York being the prime example - while a lot of other cities have gone backwards, i.e. note how many mid-sized Rust Belt cities there are here, which would've been the definition of wealth and harmony in the 1970s. (Well, maybe starting to slip a bit.)
Should include what the "rate" is in the quiz. Right now there is no indication what the number means...Not that it would have helped me, but it would make the stats more interesting if I knew.
Also, god damn, people sure like murdering each other! I just checked and the highest one in Canada in 2019 was Thunder Bay at 5.56/100000 pop...We're so similar culturally, but sooooo different when it comes to these things.
Ohio has been not great since my father was a child growing up in Youngstown/Boardman, which at the time was the murder capital of the country (he has very positive memories of his childhood in spite of the frequent car bombings). There is less mafia presence in the state now as industries continue to move out or go bust, as they have been steadily for the past 50-60 years, but that just means more urban decay, unemployment, homelessness, drug addiction, economic stagnation and other things that lead to higher rates of violent crime.
Traditional media reporting on crime is meant to titillate and enhance ratings, so they want to focus on whatever is local. Cable news reporting (on one network, chiefly) on crime is meant to make you afraid and angry, and inspire you to vote for Republicans who are still pretending despite strong evidence to the contrary that they are the party of law and order, so they focus on whatever crime they can find in Democratic-leaning states or cities. National news sources have little motivation to report on crime in the rust belt, to report on crime accurately and in a measured way, or to investigate the actual causes of it or realistic ways to address it. Fox News reporting on crime dropped literally over 60% in the weeks following this month's mid-term election. But... give it a couple years and I'm sure they'll be talking a lot about it again, or else migrant caravans or some other similar nonsense. You still won't be hearing about real problems.
By some ways of measuring (check WHO stats), there are countries as developed as the USA with higher murder and violent crime rates (the UK), but not that many, and none that have anywhere near as many gun-related deaths. It is a complex issue, more complex than both supporters and opponents of gun control like to make it out to be.
This also plays into what I was saying earlier about safety and common sense. If you don't join a gang in one of these cities, or try to sell drugs on someone else's turf, or do something to provoke a gang, probably you can go your whole life without seeing any violent crime perpetrated in front of you.
Where did you get this info? Because from what I found, the wealth inequality index for Denmark is about 28 (making it one of the top 20 countries when it comes to wealth equality), Switzerland 32 and USA 41, making it the least equal out of the three (and not by such a small number either).
I agree that wealth inequality isn't the ONLY problem America has in regards to violence, but don't twist reality.
I grew up in Detroit. I knew a handful of people who were minding their own business and shot by mistaken identity or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of my coworkers was shot 9 times from just a few feet away (and survived) while he was playing with his 3 year old son at a playground. The shooter reportedly thought he was someone else. It's not just me, look at any newspaper and you see tons of people shot by police for things like calling for help (Justine Dammond) or having a broken tail light (Philando Castile). The midwestern cities are death traps and if you don't know that, I assume you never lived in a big midwestern city long enough to make any friends.
There is a well established correlation between violent crime rates and lead exposure as a child. It's uncanny how crime rates plummet as lead exposure drops. A lot of the affordable housing supply in older cities is still full of lead paint and has lead service lines for water. Western cities have expanded much more recently and are significantly less likely to have either.
And Whitey on the moon."
"
To pick out another particularly murderous year in British history (1 American tourist killed out of 1.3 million), then your chances of being killed on a trip to the UK is 0.00000078%.
So... a difference of 0.00000002%. Wow. Staggering difference. You're right, Drunken Gandalf. The US is practically a warzone.
There was also Erin, whom I went on dates with two or three times. Does that count as knowing someone? She was on the news because she was in a classroom that the Virginia Tech shooter tried to break in to. She wasn't murdered, though. Just... murder adjacent.
I used to work in the Emergency Department at a hospital that was the only Trauma-1 center in the greater Washington DC metro area, we had patients flown in from all over, and even there it was very rare that we'd receive victims of gang violence or attempted murder. I remember one guy who came in as a stabbing victim. In the two years that I worked there that was about it. Several gunshot victims but mostly self-inflicted.
Does anyone else ever think they enter the answer only to realize they entered it on another quiz?
here it is
Also why has Orlando had such a spike in Murders?
I look at rate of sexual crimes, especially rape, in assessing a place's safety. Murder gets all the headlines but sexual violence is extremely devastating to individuals, families and communities.
Cities' sexual violence statistics do not seem to be especially correlative to their murder rates. Many cities may not have tons of murders, but are very dangerous places for sexual violence.
It's really amazing how statistically safe New York City is these days, especially given its history.
Republicans!
Republicans is the Murderer!
Violent crime is more complicated - because what is counted as a violent crime varies greatly between countries.
The correlation between levels of gun ownership and gun violence is exceptionally clear. It is not the only factor - but in countries that are in other ways similar - wealth, democracy etc..., those with more guns have more gun deaths
Using: http://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/tables/table-6
I don't know of convincing evidence that those changes had a major effect, but there definitely were real policy changes away from tough criminal enforcement.
Also, god damn, people sure like murdering each other! I just checked and the highest one in Canada in 2019 was Thunder Bay at 5.56/100000 pop...We're so similar culturally, but sooooo different when it comes to these things.
San Francisco: 5.5