The US has a lot of guns and a lot of murders compared to England, Canada, and most of Europe. This is something Piers Morgan likes to point out to Americans who then struggle to defend the wisdom of gun ownership and the 2nd Amendment: “How do you justify 4.8 murders/year per 100,000 population when there are only 1.6/year per 100,000 in Canada, 1.2/year per 100,000 in the UK, and 1.0/year per 100,000 in Australia — countries with few murders and tough anti-gun laws?,” he asks. What Piers doesn’t mention, is that these anti-gun countries have far higher contact crime (assault) rates than the US, see below.
Contact crime rates for 17 industrialized countries. From the Dutch Ministry of Justice. Click here for details about the survey and a breakdown of crimes.
The differences narrow somewhat when considering most violent crimes, but we still have far fewer than Canada and the UK. Canada has 963/year per 100,000 “most violent crimes,” while the US has 420/year per 100,000. “Most violent crimes” here are counted as: “murder and non-negligent manslaughter,” “forcible rape,” “robbery,” and “aggravated assault” (FBI values). England and Wales classify crimes somewhat differently, but have about two times the US rate, 775/year per 100,000, if “most violent crimes” are defined as: “violence against the person, with injury,” “most serious sexual crime,” and “robbery.”
It is possible that the presence of guns protects Americans from general crime while making murder more common, but it’s also possible that gun ownership is a murder deterrent too. Our murder rate is 1/5 that of Mexico, 1/4 that of Brazil, and 1/3 that of Russia; all countries with strong anti-gun laws but a violent populous. Perhaps the US (Texan) penchant for guns is what keeps Mexican gangs on their, gun-control side of the border. Then again, it’s possible that guns neither increase nor decrease murder rates, so that changing our laws would not have any major effect. Switzerland (a country with famously high gun ownership) has far fewer murders than the US and about 1/2 the rate of the UK: 0.7 murders/ year per 100,000. Japan, a country with low gun ownership has hardly any crime of any sort — not even littering. As in the zen buddhist joke, change comes from within.
Homicide rate per country
One major theory for US violence was that drugs and poverty were the causes. Remove these by stricter anti-drug laws and government welfare, and the violent crime would go away. Sorry to say, it has not happened; worse yet, murder rates are highest in cities like Detroit where welfare is a way of life, and where a fairly high fraction of the population is in prison for drugs.
I suspect that our welfare payments have hurt Detroit as much as they’ve helped, and that Detroit’s higher living wage, has made it hard for people to find honest work. Stiff drug penalties have not helped Detroit either, and may contribute to making crimes more violent. As Thomas More pointed out in the 1500s, if you are going to prison for many years for a small crime, you’re more likely to use force to avoid risk capture. Perhaps penalties would work better if they were smaller.
Charity can help a city, i think, and so can good architecture. I’m on the board of two charities that try to do positive things, and I plant trees in Detroit (sometimes).
R. E. Buxbaum, July 10, 2013. To make money, I sell hydrogen generators: stuff I invented, mostly.
What this article fails to consider is the difference in how crimes are categorized and reported in the various countries. The bar for something being an assault is much lower in the UK than in the United States. If an argument in a pub in London escalates to the point of threats of physical violence, the person making the threats could potentially be charged with assault. The lower threshold for what counts as an assault means many more such incidents are reported in places like the UK.
More reporting is not necessarily more violence.
That’s the definition of assault here in the U.S as well, i.e the threat of unwanted contact towards another person.
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Well go back to the Switzerland fact. At one time it was riddled with drug wars, murder, rape police brutality was a killer and homicides. One day their government was considering putting in a gun ban and that was when all the citizens bought out all the guns they could. After that the cops didn’t even dare to enforce the law. At the same time criminals didn’t really dare start breaking into anyones homes. Most and I mean MOST to almost all of their violent crimes are right there on the streets in the dark or in cover where no one will see it. Then you go over to Japan and the ratings of homicide don’t work the same as in America. They only indicate Homicide as the full intention of Homicide where in America we also include involuntary manslaughter as a form of homicide by accidental means through some form of injury. Also that law pertains to drinking and driving where they use that charge in place of neglect resulting in the case of a death where Japan doesn’t hold to that same suit. Immigration in both Switzerland and Japan are also very different then that of the US. They are far more strict. Case in point, Switzerland only allows people that have high IQ’s and have extensive back ground checks to migrate to their country. Anyone can go visit but to stay you will have to jump through serious hoops. And they won’t give no hand outs like the USA has done countless times. Japan however may not be as strict in that sense they do however keep a tight leash on immigrants for many years and only keep you around if you have proven you can conduct basic skills in the labor force. Unlike here in the states where all you have to do is show up and no one wants to do anything about it. the cartels coming here with no background checks are a serious problem and no checks for those that steal ID’s to get here either.Not to sound anti PC but that surely is a big reason for allot of crime here which has little to do with our own culture though we do have that as part of the problem as well in certain areas.Every time they do get caught sneaking here and creating crimes al anyone wants to do is reform the system and let them stay right here. No one will close the borders so even if they are kicked out they come right back and as this article states, they do from a very violent country. Take them out of the equation violent rapists and murderers always come back out of prison way worse then they where when they went in and no one will allow capital punishment so taxes keep them alive so they can do it all over again. Things are in our food and water known to damage our IQ levels and cause personality disorders that are banned everywhere else in every other country and then people rely on the FDA to make it better and it often times makes it worse.
Culture in our case is far from the problem. Yes we have our problems but the real problem falls in the fact our culture has been delluted with total BS all our lives and made to think we are nothing but hairless apes that can’t be trusted when it all falls way passed that.
So of course everyone ignores the stats that with one good that murders may go down a little they would all rather feel safe knowing that rape, assault, Violent break ins, so called accidental death (knock out “game”) and police brutality all skyrocket all in the name of safety. Sounds perfectly Liberal to me.
Keep in mind I am not Republican either, neither of the side of the Government should be trusted, as stated by the constitution and proven by history. But to blame guns and gun owners for the things allowed to happen by those that are supposed to protect us, I think it’s about time people take their heads out of their tail pipes!
Get a gun and protect yourself.
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Hi Robert. I found the following article about the effect of lead exposure on crime rates 20 years later to be fascinating. What do you think about the validity of this theory?
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline
It’s an exciting to think that all the crime could be stopped by reducing lead in the environment, but I sort-of doubt it’s that simple. Early American societies were unbelievably violent, with hardly any lead. In Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, you’d need real evidence to support that lead is a major cause of violence. Are Switzerland and Japan the two low lead countries? They have low violence rates, low murder rates, and low crime rates…
Yes, stopping all crime may be a bit of a stretch, even with better living through chemistry 😉
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Just checked the most recent homicide rates in most recent report of UN Office of Drugs and Crime. Murders/rate: US 9146/2.97. Canada 173/0.51. UK 46/.07
If Americans want to move somewhere safer they can go to the West Bank/Gaza where the rate is only 2.95!
Top 5 in gun ownership were (from 1-5): US Yemen Switzerland Finland Serbia. Interestingly, only the US had a high murder rate. So it’s not just the overwhelming presence of guns, it’s guns combined with a violent culture (which says a lot when Serbia is on the top 5 list but a low murder rate–I guess they get it out of their system during wars.
Thanks for looking up the latest data. The cultural aspect was one of the interesting insights that caused me to write the article. Another insight had to do with the observation that low murder countries were not, by and large, low in violence; the UK and Canada had higher numbers of violent crime and contract crime than the US, and the same lack of correlation persisted throughout Europe. I also wanted to raise the thought that longer jail terms may not do much to decrease crime because they may make criminals more violent.
Best not forget that US violent crime is only counted by the FBI if someone is injured. In the UK being roughly jostled makes you a victim of violent crime.
To make things more similar, I only considered similarly violent, violent crimes in each country, and cited only studies that did this.
The first question – is it possible to reliabily compare different crime statistics to prove valid comparisons?