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.