He may have been strong enough to wrestle the deer, but he was also damn lucky! One head butt and he would’ve been a goner.
Not speaking in some sort of code there, are you?
If you insist on comparing on a regional level, as you seem keen to do, then you are, according to the FBI, dead wrong.
The FBI lists violent crime rates by region, and the numbers for 2004 can be found here.
Region Violent Crime Rate (per 100,000 people)
Northeast 390.7
Midwest 391.1
West 480.7
South 540.6
Murder rates show a similar region breakdown.
Region Murder Rate (per 100,000 people)
Northeast 4.2
Midwest 4.7
West 5.7
South 6.6
According to the table on this page, the South in 2004 had 36.1% of the United States population, yet was responsible for 41.9% of violent crime and 43.0% of murder and non-negligent manslaughter. In fact, theSouth was the only region to be over-represented in all five categories of violent crime.
Of course, you’ll probably whine that places like Maryland and Delaware and the Viriginias should be considered Mid-Atlantic, not South. In anticipation of this objection, i’ve looked at some other figures.
For example, from the table on this page, i’ve extracted the violent crime rate and the murder rate for each state for 2004, and ranked them in order:
Pop. Viol. Murder
DC 2004 553,523 1,371.2 35.8
LA 2004 4,515,770 638.7 12.7
MD 2004 5,558,058 700.5 9.4
NM 2004 1,903,289 687.3 8.9
MS 2004 2,902,966 295.1 7.8
NV 2004 2,334,771 615.9 7.4
AZ 2004 5,743,834 504.1 7.2
GA 2004 8,829,383 455.5 6.9
SC 2004 4,198,068 784.2 6.9
CA 2004 35,893,799 551.8 6.7
MI 2004 10,112,620 490.2 6.4
AR 2004 2,752,629 499.1 6.4
MO 2004 5,754,618 490.5 6.2
NC 2004 8,541,221 447.8 6.2
IL 2004 12,713,634 542.9 6.1
TX 2004 22,490,022 540.5 6.1
TN 2004 5,900,962 695.2 5.9
KY 2004 4,145,922 244.9 5.7
AL 2004 4,530,182 426.6 5.6
AK 2004 655,435 634.5 5.6
FL 2004 17,397,161 711.3 5.4
OK 2004 3,523,553 500.5 5.3
PA 2004 12,406,292 411.1 5.2
VA 2004 7,459,827 275.6 5.2
IN 2004 6,237,569 325.4 5.1
NY 2004 19,227,088 441.6 4.6
NJ 2004 8,698,879 355.7 4.5
OH 2004 11,459,011 341.8 4.5
KS 2004 2,735,502 374.5 4.5
CO 2004 4,601,403 373.5 4.4
WV 2004 1,815,354 271.2 3.7
MT 2004 926,865 293.8 3.2
WA 2004 6,203,788 343.8 3.1
WI 2004 5,509,026 209.6 2.8
CT 2004 3,503,604 286.3 2.6
MA 2004 6,416,505 458.8 2.6
VT 2004 621,394 112.0 2.6
HI 2004 1,262,840 254.4 2.6
OR 2004 3,594,586 298.3 2.5
RI 2004 1,080,632 247.4 2.4
NE 2004 1,747,214 308.7 2.3
SD 2004 770,883 171.5 2.3
MN 2004 5,100,958 269.6 2.2
ID 2004 1,393,262 244.9 2.2
WY 2004 506,529 229.6 2.2
DE 2004 830,364 568.4 2.0
UT 2004 2,389,039 236.0 1.9
IA 2004 2,954,451 270.9 1.6
ME 2004 1,317,253 103.5 1.4
NH 2004 1,299,500 167.0 1.4
ND 2004 634,366 79.4 1.4
All crime figures are per 100,000 population.
You’ll see that the South is quite well represented in the top 10, and that the other regions you mentioned (the Mid-Atlantic and the West Coast) have a decent share of states near the bottom of the list.
Now it is true, as you suggest in your statement, that urban areas have higher rates of murder and other violent crime than non-urban areas. But if you look at the figures for metropolitan regions on this page, you’ll see that urban areas in the South are again pretty well-represented near the top of the violent crime and murder rate. Southern metro areas—some large, some not so large—with murder rates comfortably above the national average include:
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
Baton Rouge, LA
Auburn-Opelika, AL
Birmingham-Hoover, AL
Columbus, GA
Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX
Dothan, AL
Hot Springs, AR
Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA
Jackson, MS
Jacksonville, FL
Laredo, TX
Little Rock-North Little Rock, AR
Macon, GA
Memphis, TN-MS-AR
Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL
Montgomery, AL
New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA
Pascagoula, MS
Pine Bluff, AR
Rome, GA
Savannah, GA
Shreveport-Bossier City, LA
Tuscaloosa, AL
Waco, TX
You’ll note that i’ve only included here regions in states that can be pretty unequivocally categorized as South. I’ve left out Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, even though they are categorized by the FBI as South. Hell, i even left out the Carolinas.
What do i conclude from all this? Nothing really. I don’t believe that the presence of some Southern states near the top of the violent crime rate, or the fact that many Southern areas have violent crime and murder rates higher than the national average, says very much at all about the people of the South. Like most other large regions, the South encompasses its share of good people, and its share of violent idiots.
The South also, apparently, has its share of nitwits who are happy to make stupid generalizations that are not only contradicted by the evidence, but are reductionist and simplistic in the extreme. You might do well, in future, to heed the advice from this page of the FBI crime report:
Make sense?
Actually, the article said it was a five-pointer.