[Puffer Fish]

Race and Socioeconomic factors more effect on murder rate than gun control

Can we admit that other factors, like race and socioeconomic income levels, have a lot more to do with gun homicide rates than the amount of gun control laws do, when comparing across different countries in the world?

We can even see that clearly within the U.S.

Switzerland is a very middle class country, with noticeably higher standards of living than its neighbors. (It's also harder to become a Swiss citizen than it is in other European countries)
Then you have countries like Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, where there's a lot of diversity and poverty. Their gun control laws don't seem to help them, their gun homicide rates are higher.

Traditionally, in the past, gun control supporters have always seemed to want to point out that those White[r] middle class countries in Europe and Canada with all their gun control laws have lower gun homicide rates than the U.S.


Gun Ban proponents & repeatedly fraudulently claim that America's gun ownership is responsible for the US ranking highly in gun homicides compared to the "developed" world.

However, upon closer examination, the countries to which America is compared differ vastly from America in innumerable ways that do not even include far more comprehensive health / mental health access.

The following article explains more thoroughly why comparing America to a cherry picked, small list of vastly different countries is egregiously dishonest & logically flawed.

from article -

The Mistake of Only Comparing US Murder Rates to "Developed" Countries

" Note, however, that these comparisons always employ a carefully selected list of countries, most of which are very unlike the United States. They are countries that were settled long ago by the dominant ethnic group, they are ethnically non-diverse today, they are frequently very small countries (such as Norway, with a population of 5 million) with very locally based democracies (again, unlike the US with an immense population and far fewer representatives in government per voter). Politically, historically, and demographically, the US has little in common with Europe or Japan.

The US has the highest murder rate in the "developed world" - presumably because of its lax guns laws - we are told again and again.

Few people who repeat this mantra have any standard in their heads of what exactly is the "developed" world. They just repeat the phrase because they have learned to do so. They never acknowledge that when factors beyond per capita GDP are considered, it makes little sense to claim Sweden should be compared to the US, but not Argentina. Such assertions ignore immense differences in culture, size, politics, history, demographics, or ethnic diversity. Comparisons with mono-ethnic Asian countries like Japan and Korea make even less sense ...


U.S. homicide rates compared to different countries

For the sake of quick argument, I'm going to do some rough napkin paper calculations and play with some numbers.

Let's assume the U.S. is halfway between Canada and Mexico. I'm also going to throw in a little bit of South Africa into the mix, just to paint a more realistic picture.

Mexico's homicide rate: 25 per 100,000 (2017)
Canada's homicide rate: 1.8 per 100,000 (2017)
U.S. homicide rate: 5.3 per 100,000 (2016)

Argentina homicide rate: 6.2 per 100,000 (2012)
Chile homicide rate: 3.1 per 100,000 (2012)
South Africa homicide rate: 34 per 100,000 (2017)

So let's say the U.S. is like 60% Canada, 30% Mexico, and 10% South Africa.
0.6 x 1.8 = 1.08
0.3 x 25 = 7.5
0.1 x 34 = 3.4

Just to make this more fair, let's just hypothetically suppose for the sake of argument that half of Mexico's homicide rate is being caused by their current drug crisis. So instead of 7.5, I will use the input 3.7 instead.

1.08 + 3.7 + 3.4 = 8.18

So, if we created a country that was a mix of Canada, Mexico (without the drug crisis), and South Africa, to represent the U.S., the homicide rate should be about 8 per 100,000.

That seems to indicate that the U.S. homicide rate isn't really higher than it should be. There's nothing all that unusual about U.S. homicide rates, if we draw a comparison to other comparable countries in the world.


I selected South Africa because, out of all the countries in Africa, I thought it would be the one most comparable to the U.S. During the 1970s South Africa was the only country in Africa that could have been considered "First World".
Since the population of the U.S. is a lot more diverse, it would be unfair to compare it only to countries like England, Australia, or Canada.

Nigeria is another English-speaking country in Africa. Homicide rate 9.85 per 100,000 (2015).

Why don't we try this again. What if we created a composition of 12% Nigeria, 33% Argentina, and 55% Canada?

0.12 x 9.85 = 1.182
0.33 x 6.2 = 2.046
0.55 x 1.8 = 0.99
1.182 + 2.046 + 0.99 = 4.218

Then the homicide rate would be 4.218 out of 100,000. The current U.S. homicide rate isn't much higher than that.

I don't see any realistic argument that the U.S. homicide rate would be much lower, if only the U.S. were more like these other countries.


Looking within the U.S., there are some patterns to be seen. Homicide rates are higher in Democrat-controlled counties but also higher in Republican-controlled states.
I did notice a consistent pattern though. When looking at statistics for all the states in the northern half of the country, the homicide rates appear to be much lower, with the notable exception of Illinois and Michigan which contain Chicago and Detroit.

Obviously several Republican-controlled states lie in the "Deep South" region with large African American populations.

related topic:
"Map showing where the murders are in the U.S." (posted in North America section on March 16, 2023 )
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=183398