There's No Such Thing As An "American" Homicide Rate

A fascinating article about per-capita homicide rates, and how gun control laws seem to mean... well, pretty much nothing....

https://mises.org/wire/theres-no-such-thing-american-homicide-rate

There's No Such Thing as an "American" Homicide Rate

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11/09/2017Ryan McMaken
In September, the FBI released new homicide data, and the overall US homicide rate rose for the second year to an eight-year high.

According to the report, the nationwide homicide rate in the US in 2016 was 5.3 per 100,000, up from 2015's rate of 4.9.

The homicide rate in 2014 — 4.4 per 100,000 — had been a 51-year low, and comparable to rates not seen since the 1950s.

Homicide rates still remain well below where they were in the 1980s and 1990s, when homicide rates sometimes exceeded 9 per 100,000.






When it comes to making any serious analysis, however, nationwide homicide rates for a place as large as the United States are next to useless. When we look at numbers on a state-by-state basis, we find that homicide rates vary from 1.3 per 100,000 in New Hampshire to 11.8 per 100,000 in Louisiana.

To offer some additional context, I've included rates from Canadian provinces (using Canada's 2015 stats) side by side with US states:

 

Regional differences means there's no pertinent nationwide data? What an utterly ridiculous argument. National figures are used for trends. You then burrow down to test hypothesis, given disaggregation provides for more variation in the variation under investigation.

 

Nope, sorry. Not a "ridiculous argument" at all, but a very true and unarguable one.

The US is not a contiguous society. There are very deep and fundamental differences between one area of the US and another; culturally, politically, and lawfully. As a result, there are so many different factors as to make characterizing the nation as a whole a spurious and futile exercise, and a waste of time.

 

National data has it’s merit, but you are correct that state and local data is far more accurate, shows more trends, and is easier to determine the effects of gun control. State and local data has shown that gun control measures have no measurable positive effect on crime.

 

Only if you're innocent of how data is treated. Regional controls are standard in empirical analysis. There is no excuse to ignore aggregated data.

The US isn't any different to any large country in the world. Of course regional differences exist. Crikey, you're basically saying that the US shouldn't have a GDP measure as it ignores some states are relatively more powerful than others.

Providing national trends is quite rational. You'd only have a point if you wanted to destroy the nation state.

 

Very true, lots of killings take place in Gang controlled areas, as a result of Turf wars, rival Gangs killing each other off, Drug wars, competition among rivals for Drug territory,
If you account for this type killing, it differs from the usual low crime rates in neighborhoods that are not under Gang control.
Before considering American crime statistics one must take into account and categorize Minority involvement in crime and how it
affects /skews crime statistics.

 

Africa and Latin America have even higher homicide rates, and they both disallow guns.

 

Whole continent disallows guns? Is that from NRA data?

 

Should all of mainland Britain be skewed by NI data? As well as the policies for local peace keeping?

 

It wouldn't matter. We have controls for NI in empirical analysis. Having a UK measure just makes sense (but is difficult only due to the 'England and Wales focus). The problem is that

 

Who is the ‘we’?

 

Anyone interested in the topic

 

So anyone interested in the topic understands geograpically based controls that exclude a portion of the populace? I suspect a lot of West Brits might find that interesting to know.

 

Yee olde Royal plural,
"We are not amused"....

 

I doubt that. I haven't met, for example, many pro-gunners who understand the basics of empirical analysis into gun control

I suspect I don't care. When NI terrorist activity was significant, it isn't difficult to control for it in the data.

 

So if you have Black Drug dealers that engage in turf wars and kill rivals and run prostitution rings and organized crime and murder, how does gun control help ?

Thrill me with your acumen.

 

Is that the reality of your stance? Racial first.

 

I happen to be a Latino / Hispanic and many Latinos are in the same boat, you have zero clue as to My ethnic or racial heritage.

Gun Control affecting the Law Abiding majority does nothing to prevent or affect crimes being commited by a criminal minority composed of mostly Black and Latinos and in those Neighborhoods.

 

I don't care about your ethnicity. I just acknowledge that your previous post was consistent with standard racism. If you want to make a racial comment about crime, then do that with someone else. Cheers!

 

Not about racist argument, no.

 

Meh. Too much intellectual laziness on this board- people claiming to be making an argument when they aren't really.

 

Yes, those pesky Racist Police, they only arrest minorities, if they find a White criminal, they let him go free !

Your Race card fell flat.
Thanks for playing Mate, Cheers !

 

I understand a good deal about empirical analysis; It is not immune to injected bias and I have yet to see a study that effectively accounts for all the variables where conclusions are not subject to a high level of criticism. You want to debate it, it can be done privately as time allows.

As for NI, I have long noted a mainland bias of West Brits as second class citizens by many.

While the level of violence was greater in the 60 to early 90’s timeframe, there is still a good deal of sectarian violence with weapons that continues. Excluding it from analysis essentially geographically skews the data; it would be little different than excluding specific locals in the US, like Chicago, Boston, and LA from the analysis of their levels of violence.

 

The UK kept NI and Scotland data very separate from England and Wales, then combine it, then separated it again

 

LMAO, but we already know the "variables" and it's not politically correct to talk about them.