Wow. That must make you proud to be an American. Could you aim any lower? Even Portugal bests the United States.
Would you care to address why the American murder rate is 15 times greater than Australia, where I come from. God knows what the figures are for gun injuries. This is of course fairly typical of other developed nations.
Obviously none of these states are developed countries.
Russia and Hungary are both authoritarian states. Belgium and Sweden are interesting I grant you. South Korea isn’t a western country and has some funny ideas around honour.
Australia has a murder rate of .98, USA of 4.88, that is five times, not 15.
[/QUOTE]
You must be bursting with pride. Please quote your sources as I understand it to be between 12 and 15. I’ll look at it.
Let’s see some figures and the countries you claim as developed nations. By the way, there was a time the US aimed for more than the middle of the road.
From the Wikipedia article onhomicide rates by country: U.S. at 4.88 / 100K inhabitants, Australia at 0.98.
I can see where you have gone wrong. You probably don’t know this, but Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are US citizens and vote on your laws.
Selectively removing US voters to try and get your statistics down to FIVE TIMES is pretty desperate.
By the way, Australia has hundred of islands of people that vote in Australian elections that are like PNG (similar to Puerto Rico) but are included in our statistics (the .98).
Try comparing like with like, i.e. US citizens versus Australian citizens.
I think we agree on that, but the deeper question is, should the Constitution be changed? The Constitution isn’t a bible.
Is that why gun nuts always refer to the second amendment?
Actually it is worth noting that PNG was under Australian control until 1975 when we abandoned them (gave them sovereignty) and they descended into chaos. That was a disaster. Many surrounding islands in New Guinea remain Australian citizens though
Mathematically this makes no sense. Omitting or adding the stats for Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands for anything will have very little effect on U.S. rates; the U.S. is a country of over 320 million; Puerto Rico’s population is around 1% of that, while the U.S.V.I. have only around 100,000 people.
(The “insular areas”–Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S.V.I., American Samoa–are typically listed separately in world statistics by “country”. They are U.S. dependencies but are not considered part of “the United States” the way the 50 states and the District of Columbia are. This is crap from a broader point of view–these places are basically American “colonies”, even though the U.S. was founded in a revolutionary war against the idea of being governed as a set of “colonies”–but separately listing those areas for the statistics on murders, suicides, heart attacks, or fatal shark attacks isn’t part of some nefarious agenda of sweeping anything under the rug. Those areas just aren’t part of the United States.)
First of all, I didn’t make those calculations – I simply pointed you to the website where the calculations had been done. I did no selective manipulation.
And, FWIW, I did pass my civics classes in high school, and I’m well aware that those are U.S. citizens. (I consider what the Trump Administration has done to Puerto Rico in the wake of the hurricane there a travesty.)
As MEBuckner notes, Puerto Rico and the USVI are so small, relative to the US itself, that inciuding their numbers aren’t going to make a significant difference.
But, since you truly seem to have a bug up your ass about this, I did the calculation, including the Puerto Rico and USVI figures into the US figure. As both of those areas have higher homicide rates than the U.S. itself, doing this does move the US incidence up a bit, from the 4.88 in the Wikipedia entry to 4.97 – but that’s still not nearly the “twelve to fifteen times” the rate in Australia that you believe to be true (and for which I invite you to provide your own cites).
Australia has a murder rate of .98, USA of 4.88, that is five times, not 15.
(Overall the USA murder rate falls squarely in the middle of all nations)
You should have a look at the actual facts.
So, South Korea, Russia, Belgium, Hungary & Sweden arent “developed” nations now?
Hungary is by no means a authoritarian state, not since 1989.
*In the 21st century, Hungary is a middle power[29][30] and has the world’s 57th largest economy by nominal GDP, as well as the 58th largest by PPP, out of 191 countries measured by IMF. As a substantial actor in several industrial and technological sectors,[31] it is the world’s 35th largest exporter and 34th largest importer of goods. Hungary is an OECD high-income economy with a very high standard of living.[32][33] It keeps up a social security and universal health care system, and a tuition-free university education.[34][35] Hungary performs well in international rankings: it is 20th in quality of life, 24th in Good Country Index, 28th in inequality-adjusted human development, 32nd in the Social Progress Index, 33rd in Global Innovation Index and ranks as the 15th safest country in the world.
Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and has been part of the Schengen Area since 2007.[36] Hungary is a member of the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe, the Visegrád Group and more*
No, South Korea isnt a “western nation” but that not what you claimed. You are movng the goalposts.
Yes, indeed they are, but even if you include them, their population is so low their higher murder rate doesnt pop up the uSA that much. It goes to 5.1. Math does not seem to be your strong point.
The inability to admit that you were wrong is not a good sign of your ability to accept the truth. You simply can’t pin a lot of suicide deaths on the widespread availability of guns. when 2/3rds of gun deaths are suicides, when the majority of the remaining gun deaths are murders committed by people who are not allowed to own guns, its really hard to attribute all 30,000 gun deaths to the legal ownership of guns.
Assuming you are right about the 15 times greater rate (you’re not right), and considering the fact that 2/3rds of all homicides were committed with guns, that would still leave us with 5 times your murder rate.
I’m going to have to ask you to define developed country because it seems like your definition is any country with a lower suicide and murder rate than America.
Since CrazyTiger is Australian, perhaps he or she will trust data gathered by the University of Sidney.
From here, the average homicide rate in Australia from 2005 to 2014 was about 1.14 per 100000 inhabitants; the firearm homicide rate in specific was about 0.15 per 100000 inhabitants.
From here, the average homicide rate in the USA over the same time period was about 5.56 per 100000 inhabitants; the firearm homicide rate in specific was about 3.82 per 100000 inhabitants.
Clearly, the overall homicide rate in the USA, over a 10-year sample, is indeed about 5 times Australia’s. The firearm homicide rate is about 25 times larger, but the non-firearm homicide rate is also higher (about 75% higher). Conclude from that what you wish.
Everyone else has already covered the I would have thought obvious fact that since Puerto Rico is small compared to the USA, including it has minimal effect on the murder rate in the USA plus its territories.
NB: by “average homicide rate,” for example, I just averaged the rates listed for 2005 through 2014, inclusive. I trust I don’t need to explain how that was done, but the average rate doesn’t directly appear in the data and must be calculated.
Ouch.