• ArbitraryValue
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    4 months ago

    That’s an interesting question. People like to blame guns, but

    The United States’ homicide rate of 3.8 is clearly higher than that of eg France (1.0), Germany (0.8), Australia (1.1), or Canada (1.4). However, as per the FBI, only 11,208 of our 16,121 murders were committed with firearms, eg 69%. By my calculations, that means our nonfirearm murder rate is 1.2. In other words, our non-firearm homicide rate alone is higher than France, Germany, and Australia’s total homicide rate.

    That’s from here, which is an interesting but long discussion of the topic:

    https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/06/guns-and-states/

    https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/10/guns-and-states-2-son-of-a-gun/

    Edit: I’m not saying guns aren’t part of the explanation, but they don’t appear to account for the majority of the difference.

    • MBM@lemmings.world
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      4 months ago

      Ah, SSC. I was going to make a joke about how it’ll get blamed on black people Human Biodiversity, but Scott actually does

      And this is murder rate by state correlated with percent black population:

      This would seem to support the “culture of violence” theory.

    • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      A massive percentage of yous have been huffing leaded petrol fumes almost directly from exhausts for decades and yous are still wondering why you’re a bunch of murderous warmongering cunts? 😂

      • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        What do you mean yous? That was global lead contamination baby! Hence the last ditch far right swings internationally. I also attribute it to brain damage from COVID. And microplastics. And the Teflon in all our blood. I just hope there was enough education along the way to diffuse some of those violent tendencies with democratic principles.

        But yes, in general, I agree. We are a bunch of pollutant filled war mongers on our worst days.