Death & taxis (a.k.a. cities and murder rates)

Factual Questions
1

Take a look at this article from the London Evening Standard:

London’s low murder rate

The main point is that London has a homicide rate of around 2.1 per 100,000 population, whereas Washington DC, Philadelphia, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York have (comparatively) high rates - 69.3, 27.4, 24.8 and 22.8 respectively.

I haven’t started this to get into some jingoistic debate about the rights and wrongs of gun control, or an international skirmish on America-bashing. I think those debates are a dead end, and have been inconclusively argued off and on for years.

I’m genuinely curious as to why Washington DC, and to a lesser extent Philadelphia, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York, have such a high murder rate per 100,000 compared to cities such as London, Rome or Athens.

Do the figures surprise any SDMB residents of those cities? Are there particularly unique circumstances in any of those cities? Are the police forces perceived as ineffective or especially constrained in their operations? Regardless of the rights and wrongs of gun control, is it related to gun availability?

Any thoughts?

I never touched him, ref, honest!
Crusoe Takes A Trip

2

I suspect the main reason that London has such a low murder rate is that it’s full of southern shandy drinkers who are too soft to fight.

3

Are you from Manchester, android?

4

An hour north, lancaster.

5

Android, the northern side of me (dad’s family Oldham born-and-bred) agrees with you. The poncy-North-London-cafes-bars-clubs-trendy-media-types bit of me, on the other hand, thinks that it’s because Mancs aren’t tough enough and die a lot more easily…!

PS Why has my topic appeared twice? I only submitted it once, and it only appeared once for about half an hour.

I never touched him, ref, honest!
Crusoe Takes A Trip

6

There are two threads on this topic, so I’m gonna close this one. And probably eventually send the other one to Great Debates, but not now.

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