Deltoid

Peter H. Proctor writes:

If memory serves,
roughly half of all murders in the US are committed by blacks ( usually against other blacks ), who represent about 14% of the US population.

If memory serves, if you discount this one population, the murder rate in the US is below some European countries. This is counting Hispanics ( who have a murder rate roughly double that for other US whites ) with the White population.

The US white homicide rate is about 5 per 100,000. The median homicide rate for Western European countries is about 1.2 per 100,000. (Source WHO Statistical Yearbook).

This is from memory, but I think our rate is about that of Italy. I notice that you give the median, which hides a lot of national variability.

The 1992 WHO Statistical Yearbook gives the Italian homicide rate as 2.3.

There were 28 countries listed for the European region in the 1992 WHO Statistical Yearbook. The only ones with rates above 2.0 were Finland (3.3) Hungary (4.1) Israel (2.5) Luxemburg (2.9) Poland (2.9) Romania (5.4) and Northern Ireland (4.9).

Greater than of course the Brits, but that has always been true. And the US white rate includes Hispanics, whose murder rate is roughly double that for other whites.

Which implies that the US white non-Hispanic homicide rate is about 4 per 100,000. Still much greater than in the European countries where their ancestors cam from.

The British rate didn't change much if any when they went from essentially open firearms rights to complete control.

True, it didn't change that much, but it did go down. And legal restrictions only represent part of the picture of firearms availability.

A real test would be to control for national origin. E.g., my guess is that the murder rate by Australians in the US is probably the same as for Australians in Australia ( i.e., pretty low, even in the ending era of fairly free access to firearms in Oz ). You lot don't suddenly become blood thirsty when you visit the bad old USA with its gun vibes.

Australians who visit the US are unlikely to be representative. Why not compare white non-Hispanic Australians with white non-Hispanic Americans? Roughly similar culture, both groups whose ancestors emigrated from Europe. The US homicide rate is about 4, the Australian one about 2. The non-gun homicide rates are about the same, the with gun homicide rate is about 4 times greater in the US.

Of course, this hardly proves that gun availability causes the difference, but simply controlling for ethnic origin does not explain the difference.