In those countries, the society has failed. Law enforcement is corrupt and the state is essentially a failed state. In those countries the only defense people have is themselves. However in that situation, criminals do violence with impunity. No one is safe. If you have a gun, they have bigger gun. If they shoot you first, it will not matter that you have a gun. We should not be comparing the US to such places. That is why I almost always qualify my comparative statements to make it clear I am only comparing against developed nations with a society that functions. These are the societies we should be comparing ourselves against.
Some of the neighborhoods that have the highest crime rates in America are practically the same. That is why I said we need to fix the driving factors, and you agreed they needed fixing. But it still makes the point, that low guns didn't fix crime if the whole society is broken.
You say you compare us to developed nations. I do too. But I also compare us to failed states, because some places in America are as bad.
New FBI Data Is In: Murder Rates in U.S. Cities, Ranked
In 2016, five police districts overseeing only 8 percent of Chicago’s population recorded around 32 percent of its murders. Two Chicago neighborhoods, Burnside and Fuller Park, counted a rate of more than 100 killings per 100,000 people. People living in them were nine times more likely to be shot in their neighborhood than in the city’s safest quarters.
The problem of murder inequality is not unique to Chicago. Last year in St. Louis, most killings were concentrated in neighborhoods like Greater Ville and the adjacent JeffVanderLou, which sit just a few miles from the city’s downtown, and each recorded a murder rate of 162. The same disparities exist for gun violence overall. Forty percent of non-fatal shooting incidents in 2017 occurred in only 10 of St. Louis’s 88 neighborhoods, according to police data.
To give more context to an example, the average household income in JeffVanderLou is 15k, most of the jobs left decades ago, and the abandoned building became the location for known open drug markets.
America has a number of these types of ares. People who live in cities know where to avoid, and so it usually doesn't impact them. But these are failed systems and we are not doing much to fix them. And for the unlucky who are stuck there they are death traps.
That is partly true. But people are afraid of the wrong things. Most homicides are not home invasions of frail old ladies by armed thugs. They are domestic violence, drug deals, road rage, etc. The biggest danger is from people you know.
Domestic violence does drive a fair proportion of them, but most are still by people you don't know.
Expanded Homicide Data Table 10
Homicide Victims:
Husband 110
Wife 549
Mother 169
Father 186
Son 253
Daughter 179
Brother 98
Sister 27
Other family 296
Acquaintance 2,999
Friend 431
Boyfriend 181
Girlfriend 488
Neighbor 114
Employee 17
Employer 6
Stranger 1,496
Unknown 7,557
Family or boyfriend/girlriend 2,536
Non-family: 5,063
Unknown 7,557
Even if you applied the same proportion to the unknown cases as the known you would have about a third of them being people you know. But, since those with no known connection are harder to solve, it is likely a larger proportion of the unknown are people who are not family.
And even there the same issues come up. Are these more common in intense poverty? Is criminality still more common among the fatherless (and where high levels of incarceration for non-violent drug use contributes to that?). Is depression, isolation, etc. still driving these things? Often so.
Moreover, you want to compare to developed nations, but domestic violence is one area that drives crime around the world, even in developed nations. Australia indicated it is one of its key drivers. And while they have less use of firearms, they still have the problem. Warning signs for potential domestic partners, and concrete steps to help those in such situations were something they took action on, with studies looking into all the factors.
Not from people you don't know. Having more guns around means those who would do harm also have more guns around. There is no way to arm just the innocent ones because it is impossible to tell who is going to be innocent in the future.
It is because there is no way to arm just the innocent that folks resort to arming themselves as well. They want some defense when the criminals already have the tools.
Could you link to that please?
2020 USA
Homicide rate per 100k--5.38
Firearm homicide rate per 100k--4.13
Non-firearm homicide rate per 100k--1.25
Compare this with total homicide rates of other developed countries:
Hong Kong 0.3
Japan 0.3
Italy 0.5
Switzerland 0.5
Netherlands 0.6
Norway 0.6
South Korea 0.6
Spain 0.6
Austria 0.7
Czech Republic 0.7
Ireland 0.7
Poland 0.7
Germany 0.8
Greece 0.8
Taiwan 0.8
Australia 0.9
Portugal 0.9
Denmark 1
Scotland 1.1
England and Wales 1.2
France 1.2
Northern Ireland 1.2
Sweden 1.2
USA non-firearm homicides. 1.25
Israel 1.5
Finland 1.6
Belgium 1.7
Canada 2
New Zealand 2.6
USA Total homicide rate: 5.38
Data and methodology
here
This also doesn't account for the complete total, as some jurisdictions don't give weapons data, but it does account for most across the country, and is from FBI statistics.
If you mean the last six years or so, I think that can be attributed to the rise of xenophobia and divisiveness sparked by Tucker Carlson, Rush, and of course their chosen messiah, D.T.
As someone who voted third party the last two elections, it is not just one side driving the division. But we are no doubt divided. The two party politicians have a vested interest in us staying divided, and agree on many of their priorities, such as more war spending. But they don't have a priority of fixing a number of the things we have been discussing here, in regards to driving factors of violence.
That figure has gone down very slightly, but in the same time period, people moved from the countryside to the cities in greater numbers, meaning that many people who needed a gun for survival or hunting or critter control no longer need them. Other developed nations have managed to move to a higher population density without so many guns. So it is possible.
It has actually gone down a lot more, but much of it happened during the early part of urbanization, before 1994. From the same source, which I forgot to link last time:
Gun inequality: US study charts rise of hardcore super owners
The new survey results mirror the trends of the annual General Social Survey, which found that household gun ownership has fallen from 50% to close to 31% since the late 1970s, and that individual gun ownership fell from 28% in 1980 to 22% in 2014.
The problem is that we had way more guns than the UK or Australia to begin with.
I will concede that people buy guns in response to higher crime rates. But it is a misplaced motive in that it does not make the community safer. It doesn't even make the purchaser safer overall. Those who own guns are more likely to experience gun violence in their household than those who do not buy a gun.
In some cases, yes. If you are a woman living with a man with a gun you are in more danger, due to people shooting family members while thinking it is an intruder. If you are a woman or man living alone that may be a different story.
But also, think about the two statements together: -people buy guns due to higher crime rate--more likely to experience violence if you own a gun.
The people living in areas that have high crime rates that make then want to buy a gun are of course more likely to suffer violence from a gun--because their neighborhood is already violent! I have been in some very peaceful places, and I never thought about needing a gun. I have been in some more violent ones and then considered it, though I personally do not own or want a gun, and would rather be victimized. But I had to wrestle with that more when I was in a dangerous area routinely.
The biggest impact is suicides, which are highly affected by instant availability of lethal means. Then there are accidents. These are all unintended consequences of getting a gun, but they happen.
I don't disagree that they happen. Which is why when I did consider a gun I certainly wouldn't get one with kids around. And yes, suicide attempts can be more successful. '
But if people know they are not safe in their area, they are going to trust themselves around a gun more than the police who slow role those areas, or the gangs that frequent those areas.
