In the wake of all the battling over gun control here the past few days, I want to take a step back and delve into some actual facts about murder and guns in our country.
My hope is that the two sides will at least draw from the same reality and not just talk past each other. Whether you support or oppose gun control, we can all benefit from more facts about murder and violence in the US.
Just how violent is the USA?
It is a slice of conventional wisdom that the US is violent compared to other Western Democracies. But the reality is more complicated. The murder rate in the US is certainly not good as far as first world countries go, but it isn't as bad as many think. Here's a handy compilation.
The US homicide rate is 5.0 per 100000 people. That means that in a given year your chances of being murdered are 0.005%. You are three times more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident.
The US homicide rate is 2.75 times that of Canada, and about 4 times that of the UK or Australia. No reason to celebrate, for sure. On the other hand, our rate is only 1/3 that of Russia or Mexico, and 1/5 that of Brazil. As a very broad generalization, about 30 countries have a lower murder rate than us - and these are almost all of the Western democracies (and the Gulf oil sheikdoms which are probably fudging the numbers). Almost all of Latin and Caribbean America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa are doing worse than us, in many cases much worse.
As always, the media presents a skewed view of reality. It is important to note that the US murder rate has actually trended dramatically down in the last 20 years. In fact, the homicide rate is half of what it was at the peak in 1980. It is also very important to realize that it is only a tiny fraction of murders that occur in multiple victim killing sprees of the type that garner headlines.
As an interesting footnote, moving away from violent crime, the US generally has equal or lower property crime rates than the other Western democracies (link).
What about within the USA?
Remember just above where I said that your chances of being murdered annually are 0.005%? Well, it turns out that probably isn't true at all - because the US has a huge variation in the murder rate from place to place.
By state, the lowest murder rate is in New Hampshire, with 0.8 per 100000 people. That is almost equal to the best countries in the World! Vermont is right up there with New Hampshire at 1.1, and some other New England and northern-tier states are also in that range. The worst rates are generally found across the dirty South and Southwest, with a high of 11.8 in Louisiana.
Even across cities, homicide levels are wildly different. If you live in San Jose, where you can eat your dosas on Woz way, your rate is 2.6, half the national average. But if you live in Detroit, where your city of 900,000 doesn't have one functioning movie screen, your rate is 42.1, which would place it among the worst countries in the world.
It is clear that where you are and who you are make all the difference, as far as your statistical chance of being murdered. As an American, your chance of being murdered can actually be extremely high or extremely low depending.
What is the effect of gun regulations?
For starters, firearms are used for approximately 2/3rds of murders in the US (link). That means that if you could magically make all of the guns disappear from the US we would still have a murder rate equal to the UK and Australia. That would seem to say that gun regulations have an effect.
But let's look at how the states break down on gun regulation and murder. A good analysis is here, as well as here. The bottom line is that there is basically no correlation between a state's murder rate and its gun laws.
However, one might rightly argue that gun laws are ineffective unless they are national, and indeed this data cannot say much about that. Certainly there is the point that the US murder rate is double that of Canada and 4 times that of the UK, and we do restrict guns a lot less.
I point out, though, that Vermont, which has unlimited unlicensed concealed carry, which is the laxest gun law in the country, also has almost the lowest murder rate, again one equal to the best countries in the world. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Utah are living proof that you can have an extremely lax gun control regime in the US and an extremely low murder rate.
Gun control may or may not be the right thing to do, but it does not seem to be correlated with murder rate within the US. It also needs to be kept in mind that prohibitions are never completely effective. Indeed, in spite of complete prohibitions, illegal drugs are still easily obtained in the US, and illegal guns are still used in murders throughout Europe.
What are the main factors, then?
Between states there is a relatively significant correlation between murder rate and poverty rate (link). But does poverty cause murder?
A short answer would probably be 'yes'. It is certainly a cause and tracer of almost all social ills. Looking beyond the US, our 'sister' countries with lower murder rates indeed also have lower poverty rates, greater social mobility, and better social services. So poverty, social mobility, and social services must together be a huge factor.
However, there is even more at work. The United States has a culture of violence, or more accurately, several sub-cultures of violence. Many people are aware that the statistically more violent regions within the US are those that were first effectively settled by what have been termed the "North British Borderers", people who immigrated from the Anglo-Scottish border and the Ulster Plantation in the last half of the 18th century and their descendants. As has been detailed in books such as Albion's Seed and Born Fighting, this culture had a larger emphasis on violence than many other European-derived cultures of the day. In contrast, the East Anglian Puritans, Midlands Quakers, and Germans, and Scandanavians who first effectively settled the rest of the US had less violence-intensive cultures.
This split is evident today in the vastly different murder rates we have seen between areas of the US effectively settled by the former group versus those effectively settled by the later groups. The North British Borderers set the tone for much of what would become America's enduring problem of personal violence relative to other countries. Furthermore, unlike our 'sister' countries - all those other Western democracies - we are the only one that had slavery well into the modern era. The enduring effect of this especially violent institution is still seen in the disproportionate murder rate within black America.
A particularly toxic combination, then, of social ills and sub-cultures of violence is what sets certain parts of the US out from the rest of the Western democracies, and gives us our overall lead in murder.
While many states in New England and across the norther tier have lower murder rates than Canada and the UK, others in the South have a rate up to 10 times higher, and certain cities see particular concentrations that are even worse.
Within the US, murder appears to be almost entirely dependent on social and cultural factors.
What to do, then?
I have deliberately avoided getting into an argument about gun control in this diary. For the purposes of this diary, gun control might be an ok thing to do.
But if you really want to have a huge positive systemic effect on the number of murders in America - and not just the negligible fraction of high profile ones - it is clear that the main gain would be in reducing poverty and social ills, and overcoming the sub-cultures of violence.
Final notes on guns and gun laws
Obviously, reducing poverty and changing the culture is quite a tall order. So I understand how one might feel that gun control is an action we could take now, even if it isn't the most important one.
If you are going to advocate for stricter gun control - again, not necessarily argued against in this diary - there are a few things to keep in mind:
) "Automatic weapons" are those that shoot multiple rounds when the trigger is pulled. They are currently essentially illegal. Advocating for a ban on automatic weapons is redundant.
) "Semi-automatic weapons" are those that do not need to be re-loaded or cocked between trigger pulls. This applies to most contemporary hand guns and many long guns.
) There are at an absolute minimum over 100,000 defensive gun uses per year in the US - that is times that a gun has been used by a civilian to deter a crime (link).
) The US has almost as many guns as people.
Thanks for reading.