The US is not that bad compared to other New World countries. From your link we see Brazil at 27, Mexico at 29, Argentina at 5, Uruguay at 12, Greenland at 5, Panama at 9, and Costa Rica at 11. Canada is the biggest outlier, but the US still has less homicide than even relatively nice New World countries.
If you’re going to tout France’s low homicide rate of 1.2, I’d invite you to observe that Japan’s homicide rate is 0.26. Does this mean that France should adopt some aspects of Japanese law, for instance, by readopting the death penalty? Or does it simply mean that France and Japan are different countries?
In fact, I would posit that the arrow of causation can point the other way. If you live in a country with higher rates of homicide and violent crime, you will be more interested in defending yourself.
> Protests and revolutions in France have done more to guide government power than anything ever that happened in the US.
This seems like a bizarre and dubious oversimplification. France had an outright military coup in 1958 when the democratically elected government didn’t want to hold onto Algeria. While both democracy and Algerian independence worked out in the long run, the mere possibility of a military coup—something that French military officers will occasionally make threats to repeat—seems to be a major distinction that is not in France’s favor here.
Meanwhile, popular protests in the US led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and ultimately even withdrawal from Vietnam. It’s not like the American public is politically powerless compared to that of any other democracy.
I winced when you started the comparison with Brazil and Mexico. Those countries may be New World, but anybody who's visited Mexico knows not to go random places alone.
In other words, if Brazil and Mexico are our points of comparison, we're... not in a situation I'd want to be in, to put it diplomatically. Reddit's running joke is that every gunfight happened in Brazil. In fact, I often wonder if most of the gunfight videos actually do come from Brazil.
It's doubly ironic because of course a large swath of the guns in what is bordering on civil war in Mexico are supplied by the US, made possible through the (lack of) gun ownership regulation.
> It's doubly ironic because of course a large swath of the guns in what is bordering on civil war in Mexico are supplied by the US, made possible through the (lack of) gun ownership regulation.
If the cartels can ship large amounts of highly illegal cargo transnationally and setup infrastructure like their own private cellular networks, I think they'd be able to acquire all the guns they need even if the US had strict gun control. It's not like they're that hard to make, especially if you're not above kidnapping some machinists.
"The cartels" is not a single organisation. Yes the largest best-organised gangs could build firearms factories - or more realistically just bribe some soldiers or cops to "lose" a few truckloads of weapons, just like they do with automatic weapons right now.
But there is a huge difference in a weapon being available by the dozens to the highest tier of the top 2-3 cartels (like machine guns or rocket launchers or IFVs are right now), and a weapon being available by the hundred thousands for anyone with a few dollars to their name!
I meant more than just criminal prosecution. For example, federal gun control checks are prohibited from being automated and there’s a fixed time limit the FBI needs to respond within or the gun can be sold. Effectively this neuters federal background checks. Similarly, there’s ways of skirting even that trivial thing through private sale and firearm shows.
The entire system is a farce and I’m surprised there’s anyone who thinks it’s not. I would have though pro gun advocates would at least know enough to acknowledge the Swiss cheese nature of the systems in place around gun ownership in America.
As the article mentions, there are people that slip through the cracks, but the foremost problem around keeping weapons out of the wrong hands has little to do with the FBI.
For example, there are a large number of guns owned by people of color who didn’t buy them legally, not because they couldn’t, but because they either didn’t know they needed to, or they didn’t trust the legal route.
That’s the kind of thing your 3% number applies to. The only way to ‘prosecute’ those offenses would be to lock up a lot of otherwise law abiding black men who are only criminals on paper because of racist gun control laws.
It’s important to understand this context before using words like ‘lackadaisical’.
If you mean things like actual violence or conspiracies to traffic firearms, these are prosecuted vigorously and the 3% figure is bullshit in that context.
I’m guessing you weren’t aware of the detail behind this figure.
"If you mean things like actual violence or conspiracies to traffic firearms, these are prosecuted vigorously and the 3% figure is bullshit in that context."
I'd love to see your data then. My data shows a different picture.
The majority of prosecutions within that 3% are possession by a felon. The next most common are ones involving a violent crime or drug offense, and possession by a person in the United states illegally. The reason prosecution is so low and doesn't include more violent offenders is because the federal government is lackadaisical and decides not to prosecute them. They instead allow the states to prosecute under state law. Even if the states prosecute under their own laws, the feds still can prosecute under the federal law if they wanted to.
Around 10k federal prosecution out of over 400k occurrence of violent crime involving a firearm. That's a terrible percentage in my mind. Links at bottom
"there are a large number of guns owned by people of color who didn’t buy them legally, not because they couldn’t, but because they either didn’t know they needed to, or they didn’t trust the legal route."
You seem to imply that they are not prohibited since they could buy them "legally". What exactly do you mean by buying them "illegally"? Do you have any data on this "large number" of minorities that bought guns illegally and how that compares to other groups?
I'd also like to hear how you believe the federal laws are racist and which ones in particular. I know there are some state laws that have racist roots. I can even agree that the structure around loss of rights should be reexamined, but isnt wholly racist (non-violent felonies should be excluded, and some recent case law is starting to move this).
> The reason prosecution is so low and doesn't include more violent offenders is because the federal government is lackadaisical and decides not to prosecute them. They instead allow the states to prosecute under state law.
Wait, so the 3% number is a lie? It’s not the percentage prosecuted. It’s the percentage prosecuted by the federal government rather than the states?
You said: “Only 3% of federal firearm offenses are prosecuted.”
Which turns out to be false. The offenses are prosecuted, just not by the federal government. You say that is ‘lackadaisical’ as if you have some justification for that, but deferring to states is a common practice in the US and indicates no such thing.
It sure looks like you are intentionally trying to mislead people, otherwise you’d probably have mentioned this up front.
As far as racism goes, it’s pretty easy to understand if you apply Ibram Kendi’s definition - if it disproportionately affects black communities, it is a racist policy.
"Which turns out to be false. The offenses are prosecuted, just not by the federal government."
You don't seem to understand how the law works. The Federal offenses are not prosecuted. The State offenses are. My statement is true.
"but deferring to states is a common practice in the US and indicates no such thing."
Lack of interest in pursuing the law would fit with the definition of lackadaisical. I've given you the stats that show they are not interested in pursuing the federal crimes.
This isn't really deferring to the states. If one is not guilty under state law, the feds may subsequently prosecute under the federal law. Even if you're found guilty at the state level, they might prosecute you just to make an example of you (Chauvin, recently). It's a sloppy way for the people in power to ignore equal application of the law by picking and choosing who deserves it, which to me undermines the very principle of rule of law.
"It sure looks like you are intentionally trying to mislead people, otherwise you’d probably have mentioned this up front."
I have not tried to mislead anyone. Perhaps you were projecting your own ideas on it based on your lack of willingness to engage in a meaningful debate. After all, you're the one calling my statements total BS, yet not providing any responses to the questions posed around sources or data to support your position or refute the data I have provided.
"As far as racism goes, it’s pretty easy to understand if you apply Ibram Kendi’s definition - if it disproportionately affects black communities, it is a racist policy."
If that's the case, everything is racist and the very definition provided is racist since it only deals with "black communities" and not others. Perhaps we can use a widely accepted definition, like from a dictionary. Then you can also explain what is being disproportionately affected along with the why and how.
So, where is your response to the requests around definitions and data for "illegally" purchased guns and their impact? Conveniently ignoring this too? I'm starting to think you are a troll.
> You don't seem to understand how the law works. The Federal offenses are not prosecuted. The State offenses are. My statement is true.
It’s only true in a narrow technical sense. You were clearly trying to give the impression that people were simply getting away with these offenses, when what is actually happening is that the federal government doesn’t see the need to prosecute people who are already being prosecuted by the states.
> It's a sloppy way for the people in power to ignore equal application of the law by picking and choosing who deserves it, which to me undermines the very principle of rule of law.
Prosecutorial discretion definitely undermines the rule of law, and is a well known people, but it’s everywhere in every justice system and has nothing to do with the government’s approach to guns.
As for the Kendi definition, I was using black in this example because most gun control laws disproportionately affect black people. Substitute other races if you like.
I don’t need to refute your position with data - that’s not what’s wrong with it.
We’ve shown that your 3% claim was misleading as presented.
> Prosecutorial discretion definitely undermines the rule of law, and is a well known people, but it’s everywhere in every justice system and has nothing to do with the government’s approach to guns.
Prosecutorial discretion is an incredibly great thing, and is another element of the legacy bequeathed to us from the Romans by way of the English, through English Common Law.
The old statement de minimis non curat lex (the law does not concern itself with trifles), alternatively, de minimis non curat praetor (the praetor does not concern himself with trifles) illustrates why justice must be tempered with wisdom, although not exactly the same thing as prosecutorial discretion.
The government does not have unlimited resources with which to pursue cases. When it does wield the terrible power of the justice system against a suspect, it should be in the right instances, and for the right reasons, for an example.
A good example of prosecutorial discretion is around a case where a father finds his daughter or son, actively being raped/molested. In some cases, it may go to grand jury if there is a death [1]. However, in other examples [2], a prosecutor declines to prosecute given all of the circumstances, and weighing what happened.
While there is such as thing as selective enforcement, where bias has entered the mind of some element of law enforcement and enables some to be pursued, or others not to be for some bogus reason, that is not what we are talking about here.
"We’ve shown that your 3% claim was misleading as presented."
Lol where did you show that? The 3% claim is only misleading because you are applying a context to it that it was not intended for. The point is that additional federal gun laws will not be enforced because the government does not enforce the current ones, and doesn't even have the resources to do so. If anything, you have been the misleading one by presenting false information and failing to back up your (trolling) claims. You can go back to the root comment to see that they are approaching this from a light that additional federal gun laws would not be effective since the current ones are not being enforced.
"I don’t need to refute your position with data - that’s not what’s wrong with it."
Then, please, get to the point and tell me what is wrong with it. Stop draffing this out with unsubstantiated claims, twisting words, and flat out lies. Not all my questions were data related, but also conceptual - yet you ignore those as well (for example, you still haven't defined the 'illegal' gun purchases).
Whoa, whoa. I'm not a mod, but I don't want you to get in trouble -- a friendly note to remember that this debate really isn't worth it, and calling people names isn't going to do anything positive for you or the site.
Not my place, but unfortunately there's no contact info in your profile, so I can't email you. I'd rather risk saying it here than watch you kick a hornet's nest. Being rate limited is no fun, but it's the inevitable consequence of such behavior; penalties only increase from there.
It's easy to get heated, so a quick edit + heading outside is often the cure, for me at least.
Are you talking to me or the person calling me a liar? Trolling is not allowed, and a preponderence of the evidence shows the other person to be trolling (using false statements and not correcting them, calling others a liar, not engaging in meaningful debate, avoiding legitimate questions while continuing to attack, etc). I have full confidence in the mods here.
The venom with which you've imbued your comment is toxic to the culture of the site. One of the most important ideas is the principle of charity, which means you must interpret each argument as if they're not trolling. Flat out calling someone a troll and a liar is a personal attack, and if you keep doing it I have no doubt the mods will be along to defend the site – which is their duty. Hence, kicking the hornet's nest.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 is a surprisingly good primer for this, if you'd like to understand where they're coming from. Notice that "name-calling" is explicitly called out.
Having full confidence in the mods is actually a dangerous thing. I too had full confidence in the mods at one point. And, like you, I wasn't aware that I was using HN in a way that HN isn't designed for. This is a friendly reminder that you may get lucky and escape notice (HN is quite big now), but it's a matter of time before you'll get a stern talking to; the penalties only increase from there.
Don't take it personally, if it happens. It's not. And if I'm mistaken about any of this, I will happily eat crow and apologize, along with hanging up my hat of "issuing friendly warnings" in general. You could email them and ask, but the inevitable outcome is a "yes, calling people trolls and liars is off topic here; HN is for intellectual curiosity, which is a delicate thing," along with attracting attention to yourself.
In other words, don't let other people get to you. It's not worth it. Even if they are lying or trolls, you can simply say "That's not true because X" and leave it at that.
The USA also has plenty of gun production capacity. Unless you really believe 25% of Americans own 20 guns each, there is a lot of winking and nudging that guns are going south for drugs coming north.
Generally if you're going to own guns you're going to own several, just like you likely own more than one screwdriver. Small gauge shotguns for small birds, larger for larger birds, smooth bore for deer depending on state. Rifles there will be several, same for pistols. With rifles and pistols you generally practice with small caliber rounds like 22 as it's much much cheaper ($.02 / rnd vs $2), and really more pleasant (quiet, doesn't kick) than hunting rounds.
Everyone I know who has a gun has at least 4.
My friend's grandfather owns 73. In many areas that's an unremarkable number, especially for older shotguns where you didn't have interchangeable chokes.
> Rifles there will be several, same for pistols. With rifles and pistols you generally practice with small caliber rounds like 22 as it's much much cheaper ($.02 / rnd vs $2), and really more pleasant (quiet, doesn't kick) than hunting rounds.
Most of my experience, thanks to the US taxpayer to whom I am permanently indebted, is with an M60, an M240, and an M249.
I would like my wife, and my daughters to have skill with weapons too, so I was thinking about an HK417 for myself, and then getting an HK416 clone chambered in .22LR for practice.
It takes a healthy respect, and practiced expertise in weapons to build competency, and I think that relates to a number of rounds fired. Hopefully, small caliber for cost savings!
I got a 22lr slide for a 40sw sig for $300 and paid for it in about 3 trips to the range and a few thousand rounds. Benefit, it stovepipes all the time so it lets you practice failure modes all the time. Very worth it. I swap between it and real rounds to keep myself from getting recoil-shy.
I'd also recommend something like a mantis-x which lets you practice smooth trigger pulls while dry firing. It's actually a pretty smart bit of tech, it's all based on the one of the solid state accelerometers like you have in your phone.
I was thinking this would be something similar to the trigger squeeze and breathing monitors I used with weapons training VR, but this actually looks like it would be really useful, and very data driven. Appreciate the info!
> Unless you really believe 25% of Americans own 20 guns each
On average, that's entirely believable.
I think the vast majority of those people own 4-10 guns, but there are enough people who own hundreds of guns to make the mean a lot higher. In fact this is a classic example of a situation where mean can be significantly higher than median.
Brazilian gunfights between criminals and off-duty cops are a pretty big trope when it comes to videos of self-defense incidents. Of course, off-duty cops are basically the only Brazilians allowed to conceal carry.
Numbers wise, we are doing much better than Mexico and Brazil, by about the same factor that France is doing better than we are and Japan is doing better than France. US homicide rates are a lot closer to Greenland or Argentina, and significantly less than a lot of nice LatAm countries that are popular with Western expats such as Costa Rica or Panama or Uruguay. The legality and availability of firearms cannot fully explain these differences, and it’s incomplete to simply compare the US to the EU.
> I winced when you started the comparison with Brazil and Mexico.
What about Greenland?
> ...anybody who's visited Mexico knows not to go random places alone.
It's the same in the US, and basically every country in the world. Some places are dangerous, others aren't.
> ...if Brazil and Mexico are our points of comparison, we're... not in a situation I'd want to be in, to put it diplomatically.
Put it undiplomatically. What exactly do you mean by that? Draw me a picture with crayons, I want to understand clearly what this means.
An important point in the comment you replied to was that maybe demand for firearms is the result of the crime rate and not the cause. Care to address that?
> It's the same in the US, and basically every country in the world. Some places are dangerous, others aren't.
No, it's really not. I spent a number of years living in Seoul, and you can have a 25 million people metro area with virtually no areas you wouldn't go to alone at night. They may exist, somewhere, but you really have to struggle to find them. That plus no loud and aggressive people on the streets, basically never having to feel guarded or adjusting your walking path to avoid that one sketchy person.
US cities can be such stressful, on-guard, subtly "stand your ground"/"toughen up" experiences in comparison sometimes. It's draining, really just wasted energy, and as a man, makes me behave in wasy I don't actually want to.
Culture really matters. Weapon laws really matter. And national pride in places and spaces that just simply don't shape up well is something to resist.
I have a feeling that the entire "arm the populace" mindset and everything that goes along with it (the lack of interest in consensus-building displayed by wanting to maintain an exit from it, etc.) is much more likely to generate the sort of politics and politicians that would ever require civilian I arms use.
States can certainly go bad in many ways. South Korea managed to impeach its most recent bad President through peaceful protest alone (search "Park Geun-Hye protests") with basically not even a punch thrown, however.
Idk why the downvotes for orangepurple, that is basically correct. Heterogeneous societies are much harder to govern. Different kinds of people living side-by-side fight. The calmest, most in-control societies around the world are homogeneous. SK, NK, and Japan are the most ethnically homogeneous countries on earth.
Oh, and SK is an oligarchy. Essentially everything is run by a handful of families (those who run the chaebol), everybody knows about it, and it's been the status quo for years. Not that that's necessarily bad, though it isn't ideal. SK has risen from destruction to dictatorship to mostly-rich-and-democratic.
I disagree that weapon laws really matter, they matter maybe a little. Most of the variance in murder rates is more productively explained by things like homogeneity, rich-poor divide, cultures of violence, etc.
> Different kinds of people living side-by-side fight. The calmest, most in-control societies around the world are homogeneous.
Switzerland. 3-4 ethnic groups with entirely different languages as well as quite different wealth levels, managing to go without massacres and civil wars for hundreds of years. (So that their different wealth levels now look like the difference between "well-off" and "filthy rich" to their neighbours...)
Good comment. They're all white europeans and they're physically separated from each other by geography, which makes this importantly not like the U.S. for example. We can see small examples of this in cities that have longstanding (hundreds of years +) minority populations. It's not like they're mixed together, what always happens is there is a "Jewish Quarter", "Chinatown", etc. More like micro-states within a state.
edit: Maybe people thing "Good comment" was sarcastic? I genuinely meant it was a productive addition to the discussion :-)
Also, I'm not just making this up. There's significant scholarship on the question.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The cultures of SK and the US are very, very different. Particularly, south Koreans are all united by being under the constant threat of devastating war as long as almost any of them have been alive.
Which is also something that you rarely feel in daily life, although it does certainly have impact on society (mainly in terms of a period of mandatory army service for young men, similar to many European countries). I'd say the War on Terror or the Cold War had a lot more presence in the US.
IDK, there are scares every so often in SK. I remember being told to carry my passport and a couple thousand dollars in cash + memorize your color-coded evac route by the Embassy during one such crisis.
Because I can't help but get the sense that using those countries, culturally very distinct from the US, is cherry picking st best. If the "legal firearms lead to more violence and crime, and if we restrict comparison to new world highly developed countries this still holds" argument is to stand, then the comparison has to apply to every country with firearm restrictions, not just a couple. If it doesn't apply across the board then that is an indicator that culture plays an outsized role and legal status of firearms does not.
So I answered your question, now your turn, what about Argentina?
Because Canada is the closest country on earth to the US culturally and Australia and New Zealand are not far behind. Also, poverty tends to increase crime and CA/AU/NZ are closer to US economically as well, while Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa are far behind. If you want to pick one country to compare it to the US, it only makes sense to pick Canada. Argentina is very far down the list.
The main difference between Canada and US (and to a great extent Australia and New Zealand) are not cultural or economical. The main differences are in access to firearms. I fully expect Canada's murder rate to rise to US levels if US gun laws were adopted here.
There are a few very significant cultural/economic differences between the USA and Canada/Austrial/NZ.
The biggest one is that only the USA has a legacy of slavery. The USA has much higher population density as well. The USA is also somewhat more economically unequal than the other 3. The USA is more diverse than any of the other 3, especially Canada and Australia.
The US is the least diverse of those countries. Australia has 30%(2019) of foreign born resident's to NZ's 27.4%(2018),Canada's 20%(2016) and the US's 13.7%(2018)
"Foreign born" is really not the best judge of diversity in this context imo. I would instead look at the fraction of population that has European ancestry.
I have not seen many statistics linking foreign-born residents to higher crime, but locally-born oppressed minority populations (e.g. Black, Aboriginal, Native, Maori) are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system due to ongoing legacies of systemic violence.
I thought the whole point of the ongoing systemic racism debates in the US was that even after correcting for poverty, African Americans still had worse outcomes on essentially every metric from college graduation to murder rate?
While there are almost certainly small variations, the high order bit is economics. By a wide margin.
This is almost invariably left out of the equation when these things are reported.
Just like the so-called "gender wage gap", which is at best a "gender earnings gap", because pay is equivalent, dissipates almost entirely when you account for things like occupation and hours worked.
Even if you accept that differences are solely economic (this a very tough sell for raical inequality imo, it's far from fully explained by economics), that leaves you with the question of why are black people disproportionately impoverished. This is a tougher question than why women tend to work fewer hours.
And I am fully aware that these facts are a "tough sell" these days, because they don't fit the prevailing narrative.
Another one: yes, the criminal justice system is biased against blacks. However, it is vastly more biased against males. By a 6:1 margin.
And yes, I agree that the question why black people who are not recent immigrants are disproportionately impoverished is important to answer. It is important to ask the right questions if you want to get a usable answer. And I doubt there is a unifactorial answer.
Why the "who are not recent immigrants"? Black people who are recent immigrants from Africa actually do better economically than whites.
"Solely" is a thought experiment, just to highlight the importance of that question.
It's a tough sell because statistics don't back it up; there are other significant factors at play.
There are certainly some biases against men but i think you are overestimating this one. Are you accounting for the differences between men and women?
The success of African immigrants suggests that the effect really has nothing to do with skin color, but other societal and cultural factors. Luckily society and culture are both mutable.
A young black man in the 2nd perctile of income has the same chance of being incarcerated as a young white man in the 65th. The difference between the 1st percentile and 99th percentile young white men is smaller than between 80th percentile black men and white men. [1] I'm not sure which stats you are looking at, but the ones I see suggest that economics are not the biggest factor.
The gender disparity is interesting and I wasn't aware of it's severity. Thanks.
So your blog post is contradicted by the research I cited.
How to explain the difference? Well, the blog post doesn't control for other variables. Such as, crucially, how much crime do people commit and how severe are those crimes?
The UofM study did control for such factors.
And yeah, how much crime people commit varies and, yeah, has a pretty severe impact on how much incarceration happens. If you didn't control for these variables, the male/female disparity would be incredibly more severe, as the vast majority of inmates are male.
And if you look, you will see that the research the blog post references comes from an advocacy group.
Access to guns is the main source of gun crime. 'Oppressed local minority populations' or non-european diversity or whatever other racial euphemism you wish to use has nothing to do with it.
So 13% native black population, a higher percentage native born Hispanic population, multiple generations of multiple different Asian cultures, these dont count? Why?
All your metric does is demonstrate who began allowing immigration first.
US is 76.3% white compared to Canada's 77.7% white. Still pretty similar. Actually, US's numbers are from 2019 but Canada's are from 2016. Canada's percentage should be lower than US's now, given the difference in their annual immigration numbers.
I think 76.3% white is misleading because, while the U.S. Census Bureau counts hispanic people as "white", basically no North American's intuitive model of race or ethnicity would count hispanics as white. Which is why the Census is always careful to break out non-Hispanic white.
The real comparison is non-Hispanic white to non-Hispanic white, where it becomes ~55% to ~75% or so. Hispanic people in the U.S. are easily visually differentiable, most often have one or more languages aside from, or instead of, English and come from cultures that are markedly different than mainstream U.S. culture.
It's getting into the weeds a little, but there are also likely differences between local vanquished populations, immigrants and their descendants who arrive voluntarily by air/sea, those who arrive voluntarily by land and those who arrive involuntarily.
Canada and the USA are close overall, but Canada's immigrants are much more likely to be educated professionals than those coming to the USA. And since Canada never implemented widespread slavery, there really isn't an analog to the experience of black Americans. I think that is a very big factor.
That's true for every sufficiently-large section of the world. But different places have different statistical properties.
Look, my grandpa took me shooting when I was young. I remember doing target practice under a bridge when I was like 7, using a freakin' magnum revolver of all things. It was next to a very small river, and someone further downstream was trying to fish. I asked gramps "Do you think he heard us?" and he laughed "I don't think anybody didn't hear us."
That's the kind of culture I come from. I suspect in this thread there are at least three factions: the pro-guns, the anti-guns, and the undecideds.
As someone who was raised from an early age to be pro-gun, I do see the merits. But it's important that we acknowledge the downsides. If, statistically, America is so screwed up that you need to compare to Brazil and Mexico before the numbers start looking sort of reasonable, there may be a correlation with gun ownership the way that smoking may be correlated with cancer.
> If, statistically, America is so screwed up that you need to compare to Brazil and Mexico before the numbers start looking sort of reasonable, there may be a correlation with gun ownership the way that smoking may be correlated with cancer.
Compared to Mexico and Brazil, the US numbers look fucking awesome.
Compared to Greenland and Argentina, the US numbers look perfectly reasonable.
Compared to France, maybe we look bad. But compared to Japan, even France looks bad.
If I was trying to convince the French to reinstate the death penalty by pointing out that their homicide rate was 4-6 times as bad as Japan, and the French said “yeah but our homicide rate is 1/4 that of the US”, they would have a point. Single factors that map onto popular political controversies aren’t as big a factor as broader social and cultural factors. If you look at those factors, Japan is not a comparable country to France and France is not a comparable country to the United States.
Basically your argument boils down to: The USA is substantially an undeveloped shithole full of corrupt/ineffectual law enforcement, barely functional or legitimate government, broke unemployed people incapable of solving problems peacefully with nothing to lose, and powerful thugs beyond the reach of the law, so we should feel great pride that we aren’t quite as violent and dangerous as places where the gangsters are the primary source of local force and the law enforcement / military are essentially gangsters themselves.
I guess....
But on the flip side, the USA is almost incomparably richer than those countries (in natural resources, infrastructure, human capital, ...), has a much better developed and more legitimate set of public institutions, has a tradition of settling disputes via political/legal processes instead of gang warfare, and in most ways looks much more like wealthy industrialized countries than new developing-country slums.
So, instead of giving up and patting ourselves on the back because it could always be worse, as an alternative we could, y'know, try to get the most desperate people access to basic essentials required for human flourishing, and aim to reduce the levels of violence and corruption over time, the way people have successfully done in many other countries around the world.
> Basically your argument boils down to: The USA is substantially an undeveloped shithole full of corrupt/ineffectual law enforcement, barely functional or legitimate government, broke unemployed people incapable of solving problems peacefully with nothing to lose, and powerful thugs beyond the reach of the law, so we should feel great pride that we aren’t quite as violent and dangerous as places where the gangsters are the primary source of local force and the law enforcement / military are essentially gangsters themselves.
>> That's true for every sufficiently-large section of the world
Well I think Mexico is a sufficiently-large section of the world that statements like "anybody who's visited Mexico knows not to go random places alone" should be called out, don't you agree?
I would say poverty has more to do with the murder rate than anything else.
If you want to go and rob houses or join a gang, you'll get a gun, legally or illegally. This happens everywhere, not only where guns are legal.
If you can't get a gun, you'll get a big knife or a baseball bat.
The USA is rich in GDP per capita but has patches with poor people with little to lose.
In many EU countries there is far less people with little to lose, even among the poor ones.
Crime in EU is, similarly, disproportionally caused by those who have little to lose, eg. illegal immigrants.
Murder clearance rate by police has more to do with murder rate.
You are much more likely to get away with murder in the US (where clearance rates are 60% at best) than you are in Japan or the UK (where clearance rates are above 90%).
> but anybody who's visited Mexico knows not to go random places alone
Canadian here... isn't that true in most of the highly-populated areas in the US as well? And, to be honest, some parts of Canada as well; I definitely know a neighbourhood not to far from where I live where I'm highly unlikely to walk in the dark.
It's going to be true almost everywhere (not Japan? Switzerland?)
The real question is to what extent is it true? I think stumbling into such a place at night in the U.S. would be quite hard, Canada even harder. In Mexico, my feeling is you really ought to plan. You can't just drive from Point A to Point B across the country at night, whereas in the rest of North America you sure can.
" if Brazil and Mexico are our points of comparison"
Almost half of all US homicides are drug/gang related, so obviously there will be links to south american countries where these enterprises also operate.
If you want to avoid high crime, move north. Northern states have a homicide rate roughly half the national average.
You ever heard of Chicago? Up to the minute crime statistics in this northern state city with some of the most restrictive gun control can easily be found. [1.]
> The US is not that bad compared to other New World countries. From your link we see Brazil at 27, Mexico at 29, Argentina at 5, Uruguay at 12, Greenland at 5, Panama at 9, and Costa Rica at 11. Canada is the biggest outlier, but the US still has less homicide than even relatively nice New World countries.
"On a par with Argentina" is still not great. The US is doing a lot worse than comparably wealthy countries.
> Does this mean that France should adopt some aspects of Japanese law
Yes.
> for instance, by readopting the death penalty?
No. Why on earth would that be what you'd jump to? The death penalty is very rarely applied in Japan and, if you look more widely, not at all correlated with low homicide rates.
You are comparing the USA, a developed country, purely to developing countries. I mean, ya, the USA does better than much poorer countries, but can’t compare to any other developed ones. And just because all developed countries don’t have a unified homogenous homicide rate doesn’t really provide any excuse why America does so much more poorly.
I believe the problem with our developed country being compared to other developed countries goes beyond murder rate, wouldn't you agree?
We have less mobility and opportunity between the ranks of our society than some of these other countries.
That lack of equality makes our richest very well off, but our poorest live in literal third world conditions (as Alabama was designated two years ago.)
To be honest I don't see a problem with comparing us to both, but with the consideration that there is an awful lot of variance between the different subsections of our society.
> You are comparing the USA, a developed country, purely to developing countries. I mean, ya, the USA does better than much poorer countries, but can’t compare to any other developed ones.
Almost every country in the world is much poorer than the USA. Most European countries have a smaller per-capita GDP than Mississippi, the poorest US state.
So you agree that social problems are independent of GDP and have no explanation for why you think America should be embarrassed? Seems like just baseless anti-Americanism.
> Furthermore, i find US fascination with their theoretical ability to fight their government with small arms adorable and misguided.
I’m not sure how you mean adorable and misguided.
1) If you mean it would be ineffective against a military invasion, I have to disagree. The military has never won a guerrilla war, let alone one on their own turf. Think Afghanistan on steroids with how many guns are in the states.
2) If you mean that being politically active would be far more effective though then I 100% agree.
I know some gun owners in the states, and my impression is that for some it quickly turns into standard consumerism. Maybe their first gun was for self defence, but not the 20th. They can obsess over their guns, similar to how people obsess over other gizmos like the latest iPhone etc.
Comparing the US to lawless, poor countries doesn't help make your claim.
The more rational 'New World' comparisons would be Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and guess what: very low murder, very low rates of gun ownership.
"Does this mean that France should adopt some aspects of Japanese law, for instance, by readopting the death penalty? Or does it simply mean that France and Japan are different countries?"
Or more rationally, they could just completely ban firearms and make them totally inaccessible to anyone, as they are in Japan.
(And also create a super conformist, rule-following slightly authoritarian culture)
But at least the gun laws themselves in Japan are extremely rigid which hints pretty strongly that restrictions definitely work.
Wether those can be pragmatically applied is another question.
> The more rational 'New World' comparisons would be Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and guess what: very low murder, very low rates of gun ownership.
Who could have imagined that British colonies who didn’t violently overthrow the British colonial government would end up being less violent overall?
Also, who would have guessed that former British colonies that didn’t have millions of African slaves shipped in for cheap agricultural labor and treated as a perpetual underclass for centuries would be more peaceful places to live?
The US has the gun fetish because it has a perpetual racialized underclass, among other reasons. You're right the violence is tied to its history. But so are the guns. You cannot separate the two.
As others have pointed out; personal firearms are pretty useless as a vehicle for resisting state oppression and tyranny. But they're useful for stopping slave revolts or, more contemporarily, guarding your McMansion.
The problem in the US isn't the right to bear arms. It's that the wrong people are bearing them. The militia types are the authoritarian aggressors that they themselves fantasize about resisting.
Yeah both of these points are revisionist bullshit. Go read the primary sources. The gun fetish comes from our origin story being successfully overthrowing the British with civilian firearms.
As to effectiveness: the Taliban just recaptured their country from a US backed military. The point of civilian gun ownership is to force citizen soldiers to decide between defecting and killing their neighbors. That’s exactly what happened in the Bangladesh independence war. The revolutionaries knocked over military depots in Dhaka to acquire firearms. Once the fighting started, Bangladeshis in the Pakistani military defected.
While it's a bit much to suggest 'guns are because racism', I think it's a reasonable point to consider.
Also, though there is some legitimacy with the 'Guns Stop Tyranny' issue ... it's unlikely to happen.
The US will not be invaded by anyone, and the US government with all it's flaws is considerably more legitimate than most of the people with guns and has been for more than a century.
If the US falls, it will be due to crumbling from within, and given what has happened in the last few years, I'm afraid gun owners, however responsible and conscientious, are as likely to 'Rise Up' against a pack of falsehoods and populism than they are any kind of legitimate reality.
> While it's a bit much to suggest 'guns are because racism', I think it's a reasonable point to consider.
Why? What’s the evidence other than juxtaposition? Arabs are also nuts about guns. People from pastoral honor cultures (like the Scots Irish ancestors of many southerners and Appalachians: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/10/the-sco...) often are. Is that caused by racism too?
> Also, though there is some legitimacy with the 'Guns Stop Tyranny' issue ... it's unlikely to happen.
This is “end of history” bullshit. You need guns because having to kill people is a central part of the human experience. Tens of thousands of my people died at the hands of the Pakistani army because they had to fight with sticks and rocks until they knocked over some military depots to acquire firearms: https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/bangladesh-liberation-.... The Afghans have now expelled two superpowers from their country with handheld weapons. Guns work.
All of that stuff could happen in America too. Because history isn’t over, civilization is a thin veneer over nature, and there’s nothing fundamentally different about us versus them.
1) During slavery, guns were essential in keeping Black people under the thumb. So for at least 1/2 of US history, guns were an essential fabric of society for that reason.
In much the same way you could argue US gun culture comes from being 'at the frontier' - well - slavery was another big artifact of history.
When the slaves were freed they were a huge portion of the population, and there was every reason to believe there would be retribution and revolts.
Since then, there has been ongoing efforts to suppress that community, which rationally might engender violence.
In pop culture, African Americans have been portrayed as violent, which can make people afraid, and since the 1980s there's been a huge uptick in violence within that community, which also makes people afraid (though the violence is mostly intraracial not interacial).
2) "This is “end of history” bullshit. You need guns because having to kill people is a central part of the human experience. "
Your arguments here are very poor.
First, the Army 'has guns' as a legitimate form of managed violence. Keeping the Army in check is a central part of managing the powers in a liberal democracy. If the Army gets out of hand, it's going to be very bad.
'Look what the Taliban' did is a horrendous argument, because the Taliban are totalitarian murderous overlords who murder for their own ideology and not the wellbeing of their fellow countrymen.
You're basically arguing that 'Guns Work Because Look How Well The Nazis Murdered Jews!'
That's an argument against the population having guns, because it seems to me the American Right Wing Taliban are the group the most likely to use guns and for all the wrong reasons.
"All of that stuff could happen in America too."
Yes, but it's unlikely to happen because the 'government goes bad'. It's going to happen because a demagogue like Donald Trump will rile up the gun-wading population to commit violence on the basis of a pack of lies. It won't start like that, it may just be a protest, but if starts to get out of hand, some blood is spilled and then each side uses that as justification for increasing the threshold.
The last 6 months have revealed that Trump pressured the military hard for the 82cnd Airborne to be used against BLM protesters and the Pentagon refused. Thankfully, that's the Army standing up against authoritarian leaders.
I don't think there has been in all of American history an example of where American citizens took up arms against the government in situation wherein they had some kind of moral legitimacy.
Liberal Democracy stay intact with education, transparency, oversight, a free and rational press, legitimate institutions, independent judiciary. If it delves into individual militias fighting against government units 'it's all over'. Americans can then expect the quality of life of rural Pakistan.
While there is some argument for 'Guns v. Tyranny' I can't see how it works out in practicality. One idea might be to require the government a Congressional vote to send any troops anywhere, for any reason, to further restrict US forces from being deployed in the homeland etc..
The US had a huge amount of help from France overthrowing the British. Including full support of the French navy and large amounts of French professional soldiers. An inconvenient fact that Americans try hard to forget.
So that refines the question to: how important was the private ownership of guns in the American victory at Saratoga? Well, the Wikipedia article referenced above says that, "militiamen and supplies continued to pour into the American camp, including critical increases in ammunition, which had been severely depleted in the first battle."
"General Fraser was mortally wounded in this phase of the battle, . . . The fall of Fraser and the arrival of Ten Broeck's large militia brigade (which roughly equaled the entire British reconnaissance force in size), broke the British will, and they began a disorganized retreat toward their entrenchments."
So that got me curious about what "militia" meant exactly during this time frame. Well, General Ten Broeck's Wikipedia page says that 2 years prior to the action described in the last paragraph General Ten Broeck was colonel of the Albany County militia, which has a Wikipedia page, which starts as follows: "The Albany County militia was the colonial militia of Albany County, New York. Drawn from the general male population, by law all male inhabitants from 15 to 55 had to be enrolled in militia companies."
>To place any dependence on the Militia, is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff. Men just dragged from the tender Scenes of domestic life; unaccustomed to the din of Arms; totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill, which being followed by a want of confidence in themselves, when opposed to Troops regularly trained, disciplined, and appointed, superior in knowledge and superior in Arms, makes them timid, and ready to fly from their own shadows ... if I was called upon to declare upon Oath, whether the Militia have been most serviceable or hurtful upon the whole, I should subscribe to the latter.
There is a big difference: The US Government will never leave the US. However everybody (including the Taliban) knew that it was just a question of time before the US would exit Afghanistan.
It's common knowledge that a lot of early gun control legislation was passed to prevent ethnic groups like the black panthers from gaining equal footing with groups who would harass them. Much safer to lynch an unarmed man after all. Claiming to be motivated by the plight of poor minorities given that history seems in remarkably poor taste.
It's 'poor taste' to misrepresent history as much as you have in your statement. There were no groups running around 'lynching' Black people during the Black Panther era, moreover, the Black Panther era saw an explosion in gun crime across the US that was acute among the African American community. As much as gun laws are a part of the problem, the vast disparity in gun crime among different groups can't be avoided either.
>There were no groups running around 'lynching' Black people during the Black Panther era
No, but some of the very earliest gun control laws were aimed at only black citizens and were enacted during lynching's heyday. Gun control in America has a very sordid history when viewed through a racial lens, and its ties to the civil rights era and the drug war are less blatant but still insidious.
> The US has the gun fetish because it has a perpetual racialized underclass, among other reasons. You're right the violence is tied to its history. But so are the guns. You cannot separate the two.
The American gun fetish dates back to the earliest arrivals in the New World, in all areas of the country, both initial northern states, and later southern states, and the West. If you haven't spent enough time in the wild to encounter a grizzly, a 300 pound boar, a wolf pack, a coyote pack, or a solitary mountain lion intent upon considering you as a food source - consider yourself lucky.
> As others have pointed out; personal firearms are pretty useless as a vehicle for resisting state oppression and tyranny. But they're useful for stopping slave revolts or, more contemporarily, guarding your McMansion.
Au Contraire
The Taliban, freedom fighters, or Terrorists, perhaps both, just seized pretty much the entirety of Afghanistan with roughly ~70k light infantry, against a force roughly 4x their numbers with much heavier armament. [1] This, after having fought to a standstill one of the nations with the best fighting force in a long guerilla warfare, vs airpower, advanced weaponry, drones, armor, you name it.
Because they had willpower.
> The problem in the US isn't the right to bear arms. It's that the wrong people are bearing them. The militia types are the authoritarian aggressors that they themselves fantasize about resisting.
Flyover country has neither the presidency, the House, or the Senate, but the US wants not for authoritarianism.
The unfortunate, and tragic fact is that the vast majority of the gun violence in the US happens in inner cities [2], typically with repressive gun laws. Sure, there will be the occasional red state nutjob too.
If you truly and deeply cared about the horrible gun violence, you might ask why, where, for what reason, who, and why don't we know more about it? [3]
You might seek to grasp a true understanding of the culture involved, the economics, education, or lack thereof, opportunities denied, the crime involved, or not, and to paint us a full picture.
But you don't.
Instead you leave us with a shallow political attack on others. Demonizing, rather the engaging in a civic manner. Pontificating, rather than questioning. Politicizing, rather than conversing.
Take a break from the keyboard and have a socially-distant coffee with others. Your others. Have two.
People get way too wound up over guns. This is a rural/urban issue. Where I live (edge of civilization) the police response time is around 20 minutes. That is too long to deter or prevent most crime. So most rural people own a gun or two and for some reason the bad guys don't mess with us much. Taking my gun rights away makes my family a lot less safe so...
> You might seek to grasp a true understanding of the culture involved
Please do the same. Your entire post is dripping with an urban elitism and does not show any hint that you might consider someone else's point of view. Enjoy that coffee.
> Your entire post is dripping with an urban elitism
That is kind of ironic, since I am isolated in a deeply blue area in a deeply blue workplace that eschews the local orthodoxy
The difference is that I don't assign an urban or rural divide around this. I've lived in the sticks where first responders were an hour away, in the city, suburbia, and warzones. But, it was never locale only that divided those who wanted weapons vs those that did not. There were other divides there, mainly a cognitive and worldview one.
Many of my friends have had weapons, for both reasons of upbringing, hunting, and also, experience in the combat arms.
However, I would be remiss not to realize some of the underlying reasons for the high crime in the close-enough-to-be-concerned urban blight which made itself into so many rap songs. I am not deluded - there is a vast difference in opportunities, and good/bad influences in varying locations. Due to good fortune, I happened to be in an area that pushed people towards better choices. But, many people I knew did not have that good fortune, and so were more inclined to a different path merely because of that. They were not forced to make a series of bad decisions, but the opportune to become was definitely readily available.
> and does not show any hint that you might consider someone else's point of view.
I consider everyone's views, since, they are up front everyday. For the most part, the Uniparty is split into two dominant factions with subcliques from there on out. I am neither.
I try to balance my perspectives in both the company I keep, and the echo chambers from which I drink. I value what other perspectives bring to the table and how they think about things. While I might not share all of them, and I maintain a measure of independence, I deeply appreciate other worldviews.
> The problem in the US isn't the right to bear arms. It's that the wrong people are bearing them. The militia types are the authoritarian aggressors that they themselves fantasize about resisting.
Authoritarians control institutions. What do the “wrong people” control? If the January 6 nutters had taken the capital, who would have supported them? General Milley? The national guards of DC, MD, or VA? Any of the country’s corporations or other institutions? You’re confusing the Whiskey Rebellion for the Beerhall Putsch.
Maybe give some consideration to the possibility that what’s really happening is that you’re a resident of the Capital clutching your pearls at the “threat” posed by people in District 12.
This speculative argument falls flat in the face of actual data.
More effective and regulated gun control and less access to guns is 100% consistent with less gun crime.
That there was a revolution in 1777 doesn't change the fact both the UK and US were fairly equally involved in other kinds of political violence, I mean, you do realize the UK have been at war with others and themselves since the dawn of time? That they had their own 'revolution' and a Republic 100 years before the US?
The Japanese have quite a violent history as well and yet have zero gun crime.
Most regions in the US don't directly have a relationship with slavery and even accommodating for elevated levels of crime among those communities - gun violence is still very high.
Guns are widespread and available to almost anyone in the US, and there's a huge amount of gun crime.
Canada/Australia - more restrictions, less gun crime.
Europe - quite heavily restricted, a small amount of gun crime.
Japan - effectively totally banned, and almost 0 gun crime.
Switzerland has militia training and ownership, but it's generally not pistols, and they definitely don't carry guns for personal defence. Their rifles are locked up in the basement.
Mexico has tight gun laws, but they're not enforced.
While there are concerns about freedoms, the formation of 'tyranny' etc. to contend with, there's no doubt that effective and highly restricted gun control has a significant impact.
To anyone who's lived in Europe, Can/Aus/NZ and the US, it's just blindingly obvious, it's not a rhetorical argument at all, it boils down to trying to understand the reasoning of people who have difficulty conceding the reality of how safe it really is when there aren't that many guns floating around.
Most police in the UK don't even carry guns, that's how real the implications are ... and it's not cause 'they didn't have a revolution'.
EDIT - FYI here are the data points:
USA: 4.5/100K gun homicides, 1.2 guns per/capita
Canada: 0.5/100K gun homicides and 0.4 guns per/capita
France: 0.1/100K gun homicides and 0.2 guns per/capita
Japan: 0.0/100K (!!!) gun homicides and 0.006 guns per/capita
It's crystal clear and unambiguous: for countries that have civil infrastructure, general lawfulness and the means to affect social policy etc. - fewer guns means fewer gun crimes. Obviously, there will be variations (i.e. Scotland has a crazy amount of stabbings) but prevalence of guns is a firs order issue.
> More effective and regulated gun control and less access to guns is 100% consistent with less gun crime.
So what? I don't care about "less gun crime"; I care about "less violent crime".
Talking about the subset of crime, violence, death, and injury that's caused by firearms is fundamentally dishonest. You could argue by the exact same logic that the lack of passenger trains in the US reduces train suicides compared to Japan. The specific tools are not the fucking issue.
> I mean, you do realize the UK have been at war with others and themselves since the dawn of time? That they had their own 'revolution' and a Republic 100 years before the US?
Sure. For instance, England and Scotland were intermittently at war for centuries, which resulted in a lot of the people living in the English/Scottish border regions developing a particularly violent way of life. These people were a huge pain in the neck after the unification of Great Britain. So a whole lot of them got shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to America.
You know who else the British shipped to America? Violent criminals. This was one of the reasons we declared independence, actually. People think of Australia as a former penal colony, but that only started because we stopped letting them ship people here.
Who else came here? The Puritans, whose other accomplishments included such things as burning witches and violently establishing that English Republic you alluded to.
The normal, peaceful, law-abiding Brit who wasn't particularly interested in violence or religious fanaticism? Those are the guys who stayed behind in Britain.
New Zealand does not have a “very low” rate of gun ownership. It has ~ 26 firearms per 100 people, well short of the USAs 120 but still ranked 20th in the world.
I don't think it's bad in general considering the size of the country and especially considering the fact that we have hundreds of millions of civilian owned guns (23 million sold last year, and even more sold this year already). When you compare guns to other stuff like drunk driving it shows how blown out of proportion the problem is.
I would expect drunk-driving deaths to far exceed firearm homicides, and it's honestly shocking that firearm homicides are that high. I think the stats show that it's not blown out of propertion.
Why would you expect that when drunk driving gets practically no attention at all? It's even socially acceptable and joked about within certain cultural circles.
That's exactly my point. Drink driving is not uncommon, to the point where it's acceptable to some parts of society. But no part of society believes intent to kill with a gun is acceptable, yet despite the heavy scrutiny it receives, firearm homicides are still way higher than drunk driving deaths.
I know that these numbers are not directly comparable, but given the deadly nature of automobiles in general, I expected drunk-driving deaths to be somewhere around 50000 per year.
Then why isn't there any serious discussion about tighter alcohol regulation then? The CDC says that alcohol abuse in the US results in ~95,000 deaths per year, combined with drunk driving thats over 100k deaths, thats significantly higher than all gun deaths. On top of that it's difficult to argue there is any utility to it at all beyond recreational use. Where are the cries to ban alcohol?? Wouldn't it be worth banning it even if it saved just one life???
The same reason there isn't serious discussion about voter competency tests: US politics is traumatised by the specific history of that particular kind of law.
(Though IMO you're focusing on the wrong half. Drink-driving deaths don't show that alcohol is dangerous, they show that cars are dangerous - you only have to look at the number of non-alcohol-related driving deaths to see that.)
True, although it's really the driver at fault, and the next logical thing to blame would be the alcohol. The connection between drugs/alcohol and gun violence gets completely overlooked though so why not blame the cars.
> Huh? Are you implying that simply existing in the “New World” would cause the baseline expected murder rate to be higher for some reason?
That’s the pattern we empirically see with most New World countries, and if you consider the question with an open mind for a few minutes while considering the history of Western settlement of the Americas you can come up with a few decent hypotheses as far as what the reasons might be.
Another way of looking at it is proximity to the United States, its massive supply of guns and "war on drugs", which somehow seems to be correlated to an increased homicide rate.
The homicide rate in Puerto Rico is super high, comparable to other news world countries, but it’s an island and has almost no guns.
Also, the US homicide rate was extremely high compared to Europe long before gun laws in other countries or the drug war. It was 10x higher than the UK at the turn of the 20th century.
It means different countries have different cultures that value life and violence in different ways.
And that your immediate neighbors will have more of an influence on that than a country on the other side of the world, especially if there's a substantial amount of immigration.
In the case of the US, I'd say it's more-so, because so much of the violence south of our border is directly related to moving things and people over it.
I'm not actually sure how accurate that is. France has an ethnically and religiously heterogeneous population, high levels of immigration from Africa, and open borders with the rest of the EU.
Open borders with the rest of the EU is...Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium. And adorable Andorra. Oh, and Italy. All of which are comparable to Mexico where it counts, of course. /s
France is quite heterogenous. The "homogeneous = less crime" argument is a bit xenophobic/racist at best, and not quite true.
Societies with an impoverished underclass is what causes higher crime rates, regardless of whether or not the underclass is mainly comprised of ethnic minorities. France (heterogenous) and Japan (homogenous) take better care of their poor than the US (heterogenous) and Guatemala (homogenous), which is what causes the disparity in murder rates.
> The "homogeneous = less crime" argument is a bit xenophobic/racist at best, and not quite true.
Why the ad hominem? It stifles conversation. I think it is entirely legitimate to make the claim that ethnic, and actually more so religious/worldview heterogeneity can cause conflict. Heterogeneity is inversely correlated with trust because trust is formed through understanding and appropriate agreement and these differences often mean misunderstanding and disagreement. You can talk about dialoging as a way to reduce conflict, but even when understanding exists, when one norm must prevail and two groups are in conflict, this will leads to problems. The more fundamental the conflict, the worse it gets.
Look at Yugoslavia. Are Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians "racially" different? No. Language? Not really. So the source of conflict is religious.
The political conflict in the US today is mostly religious in nature, where "religious" is broadly understood.
I don't think France is very heterogeneous. I'd guess it's 80-85% "white" (mostly French, some Italian + other Europeans), remainder mostly North African immigrants, half of whom live in Ile-de-France (Paris metro area). Anywhere outside of a couple cities in France is suuuuuuper homogeneous.
Immigrant populations in both France and the United States are in the mid-teens, percentage-wise. [1]
Japan's immigrant population stands at 2.0%, and Guatamala's is 0.5%.
I'm aware that there are other measures of diversity, but many of the comments here were mentioning the United States's border with Mexico specifically as a reason for its high murder rate, which doesn't seem to hold up once you dig into the numbers.
I think the other measures of diversity are the ones that are important. For instance, an influx of Canadian immigrants to the U.S. would, I expect, cause no problems at all because Canada is by and large very culturally similar to the U.S.
The border is important in my thinking mainly because corruption and organized crime are endemic to Mexico, though immigration of people from a significantly different ethnicity+culture is also important in the U.S. picture.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. These are facts about France vs. the U.S. Maybe "developing" is a /little/ strong for Mexico, but I take your point to be more about Central America generally.
If you’re going to tout France’s low homicide rate of 1.2, I’d invite you to observe that Japan’s homicide rate is 0.26. Does this mean that France should adopt some aspects of Japanese law, for instance, by readopting the death penalty? Or does it simply mean that France and Japan are different countries?
In fact, I would posit that the arrow of causation can point the other way. If you live in a country with higher rates of homicide and violent crime, you will be more interested in defending yourself.
> Protests and revolutions in France have done more to guide government power than anything ever that happened in the US.
This seems like a bizarre and dubious oversimplification. France had an outright military coup in 1958 when the democratically elected government didn’t want to hold onto Algeria. While both democracy and Algerian independence worked out in the long run, the mere possibility of a military coup—something that French military officers will occasionally make threats to repeat—seems to be a major distinction that is not in France’s favor here.
Meanwhile, popular protests in the US led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and ultimately even withdrawal from Vietnam. It’s not like the American public is politically powerless compared to that of any other democracy.