Or Tulsa maybe? A quick check shows 53 murders last year and 26 in the first half of this year. It’s a fair-sized city too.
I find cites for 60 murders in Oklahoma City in 2011 and 85 by Nov 2012.
Did they have 11 since then?
That would be on track for pretty much the same number, but anyway it doesn’t fit references he’s made in the past.
Oklahoma’s a very murderous state. Generally speaking the South has much higher murder rates than the U.S. average. Oklahoma isn’t the worst of them, though.
Interestingly, the really liberal states tend to have lower murder rates.
Fair enough. I can see someone pushing the envelope a bit to include Oklahoma in the Midwest even though I don’t consider it so myself. Some people include Missouri, and if I were an OK resident and wanted to obfuscate just a bit, I might say Midwest too.
I had that reference too. 85 by Nov 20, which is the number I saw, projects to about 95 by year’s end. Close enough, though I don’t understand why the number was embellished to be more than 60%. Or why the numbers were changed to be three times higher. But there it is, OKC has a high murder rate this year and the description of its growth from 2011 to 2012 in percentage terms is essentially true.
Siam Sam, Missouri has always been in the Midwest, hasn’t it?
According to the OKC District Attorney the spike is due to an unprecedented number of domestic violence and murder/suicide homicides in 2012.
It appears to be not so much due to rampaging packs of criminals and hooligans busting into homes in the middle of the night and killing the occupants, but rather from delusional people taking their trusty .38s out from under their pillows and killing themselves and each other with them.
Sounds like the kind of place that Starving Artist would be right at home.
(No offense to any non-delusional people who live in Oklahoma City.)
Yeah, well, sort of on the borderline. Saint Louis for sure, I guess. Certainly more Midwest than, say, Texas is Southwest. (Growing up in West Texas, no one called it the Southwest, that’s just been in recent decades.)
But the main thing is, I can see someone fudging OK as the Midwest just to obfuscate.
I guess because I live in Memphis that doesn’t ound like such a high number at all.
“The average number annual of homicides in Memphis during the last six years is 149”
Aso, the only part of Missouri I’ve spent any time in is just across the state line from Arkansas. Definitely still a rural southern feel, so I always have a hard time classifying Missouri as Midwest.
Not to mention being home to a paper towel company that raises funds for children’s charities. On a breezy day he can probably stand on his back porch and smell the new cardboard tubes rolling out fresh from the factory.
In SA’s world OKC is the Midwest because anything north of Iowa is part of Canada and anything west of Arizona is part of Soviet Russia. (in Soviet Russia, self-defense tool kills you.)
Wow. 149 murders in a city the size of Memphis. I wonder why it’s so much higher than other cities. That is, by way of comparison, four times the rate of New York City.
I quickly found that
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The most common reason for people being murdered in Memphis is an argument between aquaintances or a domestic dispute, and
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The murder was usually committed by the murderer taking out a gun.
Really Starving Artist, I’d like to think we are all above that kind of thing.
So, the increase in homicides in your hometown is due to unprecedented numbers of domestic violence murders, and you are citing that as a reason to keep a loaded gun in every room of the house, right?
Yep. Pretty much. This is why I don’t feel unsafe in Memphis. I am not the type to start arguments, generally speaking 
Closed pending staff discussion of policy issues raised by this thread.
This thread was closed temporarily following a complaint about the actions of a moderator. The facts:
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In the course of an acrimonious debate, the identity of Starving Artist’s hometown became an issue. In post #602 RickJay asked SA to name the city and asked, “tell me it’s okay for me to use your IP address to verify your location,” which Rick as a moderator had the ability to do.
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SA refused to name his hometown. Rick deduced it based on information given by SA in previous posts and named it in post #720. SA then beefed.
Upon review, we’ve concluded that:
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Rick was participating in the discussion as an ordinary poster rather than as a mod, but blurred that distinction by saying he’d check SA’s IP number. Only mods can view IP numbers, and are supposed to do so only to enforce board rules. Although RickJay was provoked by SA’s obstinate behavior, he nonetheless was out of line, even though he didn’t actually check the number.
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Our privacy policy says: “From time to time we may acquire nonconfidential but sensitive information about you, some of which you may have posted yourself to our board. We won’t disclose or repeat such information except as (a) reasonable and necessary to manage our business,” etc. While the name of SA’s hometown wasn’t all that sensitive, SA was not unreasonably creeped out by its disclosure. This is not the kind of thing mods should be doing.
RickJay acknowledges the above mistakes and has apologized to SA. SA has accepted the apology. I continue to have high confidence in RickJay and am grateful for his long service to the SDMB. I regret having to go public with this but felt it necessary to indicate the seriousness with which we take our privacy policy.
One last thing: SA, do everybody including yourself a favor and dial back.
That’s it. Feel free to resume.
God bless us, everyone.
Is SA still allowed to whore out cites at $5000 a pop?
Dammit who woke Ed?
I kid I kid.
I’m glad it was worked out. Thought it was pretty clear he was able to figure it out with information already provided just like anyone else could.
So… SA said, go ahead, figure it out! and then complained that someone (who was also a mod) managed to do so? And that in the process, he didn’t get paid?