The Mistake Of Only Comparing US Murder Rates To "Developed" Countries

[VMI77]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-1 ... -countries

Much of the political thinking about violence in the United States comes from unfavorable comparisons between the United States and a series of cherry-picked countries with lower murder rates and with fewer guns per capita. We’ve all seen it many times. The United States, with a murder rate of approximately 5 per 100,000 is compared to a variety of Western and Central European countries (also sometimes Japan) with murder rates often below 1 per 100,000. This is, in turn, supposed to fill Americans with a sense of shame and illustrate that the United States should be regarded as some sort of pariah nation because of its murder rate.

Note, however, that these comparisons always employ a carefully selected list of countries, most of which are very unlike the United States. They are countries that were settled long ago by the dominant ethnic group, they are ethnically non-diverse today, they are frequently very small countries (such as Norway, with a population of 5 million) with very locally based democracies (again, unlike the US with an immense population and far fewer representatives in government per voter). Politically, historically, and demographically, the US has little in common with Europe or Japan.

First two paragraphs of a long detailed article.

[JALLEN]

According to Bill Little, it's all nonsense anyway.

As I point out over and over, 67.3% of statistics are misleading, and the rest of them flat wrong,

[baldeagle]

What a fantastic article. I guarantee you I will use it on more than one occasion.

[cb1000rider]

So, could one read into that:
If the US was largely one ethnicity and had more local government representation that our murder rate would drop? I think there is more to it than that..

Any indication of what countries were comparable?

[philip964]

One wonders with the influx of new immigrants to Europe will their rates change?

And of course if your cherry picking countries, always suggest islands or island continents. It also helps to pick a year the cherry picked country did not have a mass murder. (Norway)

If I'm cherry picking, I like Switzerland for high legal gun ownership and oh pick a H### hole for strict gun laws and low legal gun ownership.

[winters]

What i find to be funny is they do all those graphs and just happen to leave out mexico.

[greenbeer]

As I point out over and over, 67.3% of statistics are misleading, and the rest of them flat wrong,

And the other 78% are made up on the spot.

[Jim Beaux]

Much of what is printed condemning US violent crime is malarky. US crime compares favorably with much of the world & is generally average to below average. Ive also read that it's difficult to find accurate comparisons because of the way some countries categorize crime.

Of course we only see the media publicizing gun violence- which is as biased as reporting death by boomerangs in Oz

The below link is to a study done by European Survey on Crime and Safety(EU ICS) and has an association with the UN. Interestingly I havent found a category specifically for homicide.

Read the Preface before reading the study.

The four countries with the highest overall
prevalence victimisation rates in 2004 are Ireland, England & Wales, New
Zealand and Iceland3. Other countries with comparatively high victimisation
rates are Northern Ireland, Estonia, the Netherlands, Denmark,
Mexico, Switzerland and Belgium. All these countries have overall victimisation
rates that are statistically significantly higher than the average of
the 30 participating countries. The USA, Canada, Australia and Sweden
show rates near the average. Compared to past results, they have dropped
several places in the ranking on overall victimisation.

Check page Overall victimisation for 10 crimes p. 43 -45, Robbery & Robbery by Contact 71-75, Assaults & Threats p.81-82, Reporting of 5 Types of crime p. 110

https://www.openicpsr.org/repoFile/download/41799