Looking for murder stats - US is more violent in general? Punching?

[WheelGunMan]

This is a quote from Fog City Midge...not sure how current it is.

"The US averages 35,000 deaths a year from firearms and only 2/3rds of those are suicides.
There are over 300,000,000 guns in the US.
And 5 times more deaths by stabbing than by rifles.
More people are beaten to death than killed by “Assault Weapons".
We have more guns in our country than any other country yet we rate 28th in gun deaths.
Handguns are responsible for over 80% of mass shootings.
Between 1993 and 2003 gun ownership went up 56% while gun violence went down by half.
2015 95% of all mass shootings happened in gun free zones.
All six states that banned open carry between 2013–2015 experience higher police fatalities due to firearms.
On average, the people who have concealed carry permits, commit less crime than police do.
The Swiss have 2 million guns for 8 million people and have little restriction on firearms. Their gun deaths per year is almost 0."

 

[I6turbo]

I was watching the BBC a couple weeks ago and there was a small riot that included a shooting in some crap hole in the UK that they were reporting on. The person doing the report finished off by saying that these are the kinds of things we hear about in the US all the time, but not here in the UK. Hummmm. Would seem we have a reputation.....

Yes, it's very, very dangerous here. You and your loved ones aren't likely to survive more than a month or two. Do you and yours a favor; DO NOT COME HERE.

 

[Phaedrus/69]

Remove the crime stats for the 5 largest US Cities and the US barely make the top 50 countries for "gun violence."

Helps to "cherry pick" the data, too--using only "developed" nation data allows skipping over, say, Honduras, which is a frighteningly violent place (as in you are safer in Detroit).

This can be spun in so many ways, it's dizzying.

Well, you've found a great way to spin! So the USA should calculate our crime rate by dropping most of the high crime areas to compare to other countries that count all of theirs? That's mighty convenient! And a lot easier than looking at the facts.

 

[CDW4ME]

Someone stabs people: anti-gunners (mostly Democrat) ... We need more gun control in the US.

 

[buck460XVR]

Helps to "cherry pick" the data,

Yes it does.

Remove the crime stats for the 5 largest US Cities and the US barely make the top 50 countries for "gun violence."

But the population of those 5 largest U.S. cities is more than or equal to, the populations of many developed nations, like Chile, Guatemala, and the Netherlands. It's twice the population of countries like Greece, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Sweden.

Yes, you can manipulate the message.

Yep, and both sides do it.

While America is ranked #1 in the world in overall crime, it is only 10th in the world for murder from firearms. Problem is, murder by firearms is highly publicized here.

We are a country whose popular pastimes include violent sports like Football, boxing and MMAs. Many of us were taught by our fathers how to "stick up for ourselves". Our most popular movies and T.V. shows include violence. Not a new thing, many of us baby boomers grew up with T.V. westerns were fist fights and gun fights were in every episode. Like guns, like it or not, violence is part of our culture. Still does not validate murder.

 

[daverich4]

So, what are the stats really telling us? What do you want the stats to tell you, one way California is safer then Nevada and DC, another DC is the worst, California can be displayed as the largest number of murders or 24th on the list if you go by rate.

The total number murdered in a state or city, the Rate of people murdered in a state or city, the ranking of that state by total or by rate, etc.

d

I want to know the rate.
City A has a population of 100. 10 of them were murdered last year.
City B has a population of 100,000. 100 of them were murdered last year.
10 times as many people were murdered in City B but your chance of it happening to you is 1 in 1,000 in City B compared to 1 in 10 in City A.

 

[CapnMac]

So the USA should calculate our crime rate by dropping most of the high crime areas to compare to other countries that count all of theirs? That's mighty convenient! And a lot easier than looking at the facts

No, what I'm suggesting is that we have to be careful with presented data. Especially any data that has high amplitude shifts across a long population baseline.

Let's create an X axis of 10 counties. Let's say there are 100 of something (anything, oranges, for instance) in one of the counties, and only 1 in all the rest. The simple average for the ten is 10.9 oranges per county. Except, the data shows us that there are generally only one orange per county. For 90% of the survey, the reporting the average overstates the number of oranges by 900%. Further, if you are in the one county with 100, the 10.9 number is under-reported by 90%.

This is significant as 50% of the US population lives in just 32 of the about 3000 Counties in the US. Which creates just these sorts of lop-sided amplitude shifts.
Here's a perspective. The NYC metro area has about 20 million residents., in an area about the size of the Houston Metro area. 20 million yawn, MYC is big & water is wet. 20 million is 80% of the Texas population; Houston is only 28% of that. The crime rate of, say, the Bronx does little to inform a resident of Tomball, TX (and even less so for residents of Alvin or Waller.