6 ms·

I recently moved to a "bad neighborhood" and was very surprised to learn that there was only one murder here last year, and it was between friends who had stole

I recently moved to a "bad neighborhood" and was very surprised to learn that there was only one murder here last year, and it was between friends who had stolen something from each other. There were only around 13,000 murders last year in the US, a number that used to be more like 26,000 during the crack epidemic 30 years ago. US population has increased by 10s of millions since then, but murders continue to drop. Additonally, 90% of murders occur between people who know each other in some form, be it neighbors or classmates. Being robbed at gunpoint on the street or in your apartment and then shot to death is quite rare, especially if you arent in places like Memphis, Detroit, Chicago, NOLA, Cleveland, St Louis. The USA certainly isn't perfect but I was thrilled to get a good price on a great apartment in what everyone else calls "the hood". I will take my chances that I won't be the unlucky 1 out of 11,000 people who is shot here every year.

kolbe 8y ago
You simply did not live in a bad neighborhood by American standards. The worst neighborhoods in Chicago have murder rates far worse than Brazil as a country. For example Brazil has an intentional homicide rate around 30, whereas Chicago has 26 neighborhoods higher, with the most dangerous one, Engelwood, topping out at 172. To put that in context, the world's most dangerous city is Caracas at 120. http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2017/07/chicagos-safest-and-most-dangerous-neighborhoods-by-murder-rate/ http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2017/07/chicagos-safe...
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Comparing a Chicago neighborhood to a South American city seems a little disingenuous. It might be more appropriate to compare the most violent neighborhood in Chicago to the most violent neighborhood in a similarly-sized Venezuelan city. Just as you would compare the safest neighborhoods in both cities.
  - kolbe 8y ago
    "to put that into context" -me I was giving context of what that number means. Not claiming Chicago is more violent than Caracas.
  - leopoldo 8y ago
    Venezuelan here. I was gonna make the same point. Imagine how bad Caracas is, given that the population is roughly the same (or a little larger than Chicago's). There are no official numbers for Caracas as the government "chose" not to report. But Chicago has a 15.65 murde rate vs. a +110 in Caracas (per 100 000). I don't even want to think what's the rate for the equivalent of Engelwood in Caracas :(
  - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    Exactly. The murder rate in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city was in the 50's. It has recently dropped to 6.1 per 100,000 residents and is quite safe. So the city is in some cases MORE safe than the less urban areas, the main reason for this drop was a drop in gang violence based on the consolidation and dominant victory of a single gang. That gang is the PCC. In areas where multiple gangs are still fighting for control the violence can be incredible.
- bendotero 8y ago
  At one point during the US military involvement in Afghanistan you were more likely to get murdered in Chicago than get killed in active combat. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/09/08/homicides-in-chicago-eclipse-u-s-death-toll-in-afghanistan-and-iraq-infographic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/09/08/homici...
TremendousJudge 8y ago
I'm pretty sure it's about the same in Brazil too, most murders are drug and gang related
- lbrito 8y ago
  Yes, about 80% are drug related.
  - duncanawoods 8y ago
    What is the conflict that's causing such a high rate? I associate Col/Mex deaths with cartels warring over trafficking routes but what is happening in Brazil? Is it just street trade?
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      Normal business disputes are settled through the courts (or the threat of the courts). Disputes related to illegal business are settled through violence. The state benefits by maintaining a base level of violence, so it always keeps some popular industries outlawed.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - erredois 8y ago
      Col is a producer, Mex is a route to the US, Brazil is a route to Europe
    - marcosdumay 8y ago
      Brazil has 3 national-level drug cartels that are in their own mini-war. Besides that, some cities (like Rio and São Paulo) have many local cartels that constantly fight over territory.
randyrand 8y ago
Murder is not the only crime people try to avoid.
mfoy_ 8y ago
I mean, there's more to a "good" or "bad" neighbourhood than how many people die each year. There's all the other types of crime, for instance... That, and if you want to raise a family, what kind of role models and community surrounds your children is important.
- everdev 8y ago
  On the flip side, it probably helps if good role models are willing to take their chances in establishing their presence in an at risk community. Change has to start somewhere.
  - mfoy_ 8y ago
    Sure, that's called gentrification.
    - dddddaviddddd 8y ago
      Reduced crime is one aspect of gentrification, but generally it's a changing demographic as people get priced out of a neighbourhood.
- dsnuh 8y ago
  Yeah, when I hear "bad neighborhood", I think more of property related crime, graffiti, loitering, abandoned/neglected houses, etc.
jandrewrogers 8y ago
Murders in the US are extremely unevenly distributed. Most Americans live their entire lives without ever knowing anyone who was murdered. Many "bad neighborhoods" are not bad because of the prevalence of murder, but because of the prevalence of burglary, theft, etc.
- Frondo 8y ago
  Anecdotally, I wonder how true this is. I'm two degrees separated from two people who were murdered--one was a colleague of my father (killer never caught, suspected they knew each other, though), one a friend of my sister (also never caught, though less likely a friend/acquaintance due to her age). Surely my experience isn't that unique?? If so, wow.
  - EvilEndures 8y ago
    I don't think it is unique if you are using two degrees of separation. A) A friend's sister who got addicted to crack and was murdered by a guy her bf pissed off. He was caught. B) One of my previous bosses had a cousin murdered in a domestic terrorist attack.
  - acchow 8y ago
    I think the world has about 3.5 degrees of separation. Probably 2 degrees is more than half the country?
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  I don't really care about those crimes because I don't own valuable things. I could recover easily if someone stole my car, which is worth less than $1,000. I do care about rape, assault, and murder. I don't ever want to be caught up in that. So I was very glad to learn that though my small town has an above average murder rate, it's between people who don't associate with me.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
- jessaustin 8y ago
  If we killed fewer innocents overseas, we'd have better karma.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
djsumdog 8y ago
Random crime in general is actually pretty rare. You are always most likely to be a victim of a crime by a family member, 2nd a person you know. Even in Brazil I bet a lot of this happens in communities, where they can try to justify violence due to some perceived slight. And of course let's not forget that America's crazy gun laws are pushed by gun lobbies because they help increase sales by creating an easy way to funnel guns into South and Central America. Much of the violence is there because of things like The School of the Americas and the work of US interests in promoting less democratic states to make it easier to gather resources (see the book: Confessions of an Economic Hitman). While it may not be directly related to the gang violence, those policies do spill over and make this sort of trend easier.
- tomcam 8y ago
  > America's crazy gun laws are pushed by gun lobbies because they help increase sales by creating an easy way to funnel guns into South and Central America. What? The Bill of Rights was that prescient? I assume it is our freedom of the press that’s responsible for the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf?
  - simonh 8y ago
    Brit here, no but the Communist Manifesto is on us.
    - tomcam 8y ago
      My point exactly
- briandear 8y ago
  > let's not forget that America's crazy gun laws are pushed by gun lobbies because they help increase sales by creating an easy way to funnel guns into South and Central America. Could we please stick to facts? US gun laws have essentially no impact on this issue. Based on murder rates, it would seem like Brazil is the place with "crazy" gun laws. Shifting responsibility for Brazil's violence to US gun manufacturers is intellectually dishonest. Ultimately, Brazilians are pulling triggers and they're pulling triggers of mostly Brazilian weapons. US gun makers sell a lot more guns to Americans than Brazilians, yet Brazil has 63,880 homicides? The US had 17,250 homicides and over 125 million more people. The idea that Brazilian homicides are because of US gun makers is just absurd. Homicide rates don't directly correlate to gun availability. Mexico had 29,168 homicides in 2017 with a population of 200 million fewer people than in the US. And Mexico has some of the strictest gun laws anywhere. Venezuela has the third highest murder rate in the world and the influence of the US gun lobby is non-existent. Most weapons there have some sort of Soviet/Cuban/socialist origin. You won't find too many Smith and Wesson's on the streets of Caracas. Venezuela passed the "Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law" with the stated aim of disarming all citizens, with prison sentences up to 20 years for even possessing a gun. And what happened? The homicide rate rose from 73 per 100k to 90 per 100k (despite Maduro being known from undercounting crime.) Correlation doesn't imply causation of course, but the point is that Venezuela's homicide rates have nothing to do with the US gun lobby. It's absurd to even make such a connection. In Brazil, over 68% of guns seized by police were manufactured by Brazilian government subsidized firms including Taurus, Rossi, IMBEL and CBC. Most of these guns were purchased or stolen from Brazil. My 68% number comes from 2014, but here's a report from 2011-2012 that shows similar numbers: http://www.soudapaz.org/upload/file/relatorio_armas_do_crime_ingles_1.pdf http://www.soudapaz.org/upload/file/relatorio_armas_do_crime... The point is that some political cheap shot on US gun laws and the "gun lobby" isn't even relevant to this problem in Brazil. In terms of "assault" rifles, an AK-47 is more common in Brazil than US-manufactured weapons. So we could just as as much argue that leftist-government gun policies are just as much to blame since AK-47s are vestiges of the Soviet-Cuban-backed socialist revolutionary groups from the 1980s. But even that argument is weak considering the vast majority of weapons used in Brazilian violent crime are handguns of Brazilian origin. The point is, Brazilian violent crime is a Brazilian problem. Dragging US gun laws into this debate is just ridiculous since such an assertion isn't backed by any actual data.
sjs382 8y ago
Even here in New Orleans, violence tends to be between people who have a relationship with each other or at least know one another.
simonh 8y ago
>S population has increased by 10s of millions since then, but murders continue to drop. Yet mass shootings are becoming dramatically more common. What I find curious is that while the Brazilian murder rate is about 6 or 7 times that in the US, the rate of firearm related deaths is 'only' double. Is firearm suicide dramatically more common in the US, or are a lot of the murders perpetrated in Brazil not firearm related? It just seems odd.
- shiftpgdn 8y ago
  70-80% of all firearm deaths in the US are suicide related.
  - jrace 8y ago
    Closer to 66%, https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-america/ https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-america/ Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides.5 The U.S. gun suicide rate is eight times that of other high-income countries.6 Access to a gun increases the risk of death by suicide by three times.7 Gun suicides are concentrated in states with high rates of gun ownership.8 Most people who attempt suicide do not die—unless they use a gun. Across all suicide attempts not involving a firearm, less than five percent will result in death.9 But for gun suicides, those statistics are flipped: approximately 85 percent of gun suicide attempts end in death
- malandrew 8y ago
  The US owns 40% of guns in the world. 4% of the world's population. Yet only 3.7% of homicides. Lots of the murders in Brazil are firearms related and it has very strong gun-control laws. The average citizen is not allowed to own a gun.
bluedino 8y ago
>> here were only around 13,000 murders last year in the US And 5% of those were in Chicago alone.
- wenc 8y ago
  Not sure why Chicago was brought up, but it is worth noting that it is a huge city with a population that is nearly the size of the entire state of Michigan. Despite popular imagination, in terms of per capita homicide rates, Chicago is actually middle of the pack. [1] Newark has a higher homicide rate. [1] https://www.thetrace.org/2018/04/highest-murder-rates-us-cities-list/ https://www.thetrace.org/2018/04/highest-murder-rates-us-cit...

kolbe 8y ago

You simply did not live in a bad neighborhood by American standards. The worst neighborhoods in Chicago have murder rates far worse than Brazil as a country. For example Brazil has an intentional homicide rate around 30, whereas Chicago has 26 neighborhoods higher, with the most dangerous one, Engelwood, topping out at 172. To put that in context, the world's most dangerous city is Caracas at 120. http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2017/07/chicagos-safest-and-most-dangerous-neighborhoods-by-murder-rate/ http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2017/07/chicagos-safe...

reaperducer 8y ago
Comparing a Chicago neighborhood to a South American city seems a little disingenuous. It might be more appropriate to compare the most violent neighborhood in Chicago to the most violent neighborhood in a similarly-sized Venezuelan city. Just as you would compare the safest neighborhoods in both cities.
- kolbe 8y ago
  "to put that into context" -me I was giving context of what that number means. Not claiming Chicago is more violent than Caracas.
- leopoldo 8y ago
  Venezuelan here. I was gonna make the same point. Imagine how bad Caracas is, given that the population is roughly the same (or a little larger than Chicago's). There are no official numbers for Caracas as the government "chose" not to report. But Chicago has a 15.65 murde rate vs. a +110 in Caracas (per 100 000). I don't even want to think what's the rate for the equivalent of Engelwood in Caracas :(
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  Exactly. The murder rate in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city was in the 50's. It has recently dropped to 6.1 per 100,000 residents and is quite safe. So the city is in some cases MORE safe than the less urban areas, the main reason for this drop was a drop in gang violence based on the consolidation and dominant victory of a single gang. That gang is the PCC. In areas where multiple gangs are still fighting for control the violence can be incredible.
bendotero 8y ago
At one point during the US military involvement in Afghanistan you were more likely to get murdered in Chicago than get killed in active combat. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/09/08/homicides-in-chicago-eclipse-u-s-death-toll-in-afghanistan-and-iraq-infographic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/09/08/homici...

TremendousJudge 8y ago

I'm pretty sure it's about the same in Brazil too, most murders are drug and gang related

lbrito 8y ago
Yes, about 80% are drug related.
- duncanawoods 8y ago
  What is the conflict that's causing such a high rate? I associate Col/Mex deaths with cartels warring over trafficking routes but what is happening in Brazil? Is it just street trade?
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Normal business disputes are settled through the courts (or the threat of the courts). Disputes related to illegal business are settled through violence. The state benefits by maintaining a base level of violence, so it always keeps some popular industries outlawed.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - erredois 8y ago
    Col is a producer, Mex is a route to the US, Brazil is a route to Europe
  - marcosdumay 8y ago
    Brazil has 3 national-level drug cartels that are in their own mini-war. Besides that, some cities (like Rio and São Paulo) have many local cartels that constantly fight over territory.

randyrand 8y ago

Murder is not the only crime people try to avoid.

mfoy_ 8y ago

I mean, there's more to a "good" or "bad" neighbourhood than how many people die each year. There's all the other types of crime, for instance... That, and if you want to raise a family, what kind of role models and community surrounds your children is important.

everdev 8y ago
On the flip side, it probably helps if good role models are willing to take their chances in establishing their presence in an at risk community. Change has to start somewhere.
- mfoy_ 8y ago
  Sure, that's called gentrification.
  - dddddaviddddd 8y ago
    Reduced crime is one aspect of gentrification, but generally it's a changing demographic as people get priced out of a neighbourhood.
dsnuh 8y ago
Yeah, when I hear "bad neighborhood", I think more of property related crime, graffiti, loitering, abandoned/neglected houses, etc.

jandrewrogers 8y ago

Murders in the US are extremely unevenly distributed. Most Americans live their entire lives without ever knowing anyone who was murdered. Many "bad neighborhoods" are not bad because of the prevalence of murder, but because of the prevalence of burglary, theft, etc.

Frondo 8y ago
Anecdotally, I wonder how true this is. I'm two degrees separated from two people who were murdered--one was a colleague of my father (killer never caught, suspected they knew each other, though), one a friend of my sister (also never caught, though less likely a friend/acquaintance due to her age). Surely my experience isn't that unique?? If so, wow.
- EvilEndures 8y ago
  I don't think it is unique if you are using two degrees of separation. A) A friend's sister who got addicted to crack and was murdered by a guy her bf pissed off. He was caught. B) One of my previous bosses had a cousin murdered in a domestic terrorist attack.
- acchow 8y ago
  I think the world has about 3.5 degrees of separation. Probably 2 degrees is more than half the country?
anoncoward111 8y ago
I don't really care about those crimes because I don't own valuable things. I could recover easily if someone stole my car, which is worth less than $1,000. I do care about rape, assault, and murder. I don't ever want to be caught up in that. So I was very glad to learn that though my small town has an above average murder rate, it's between people who don't associate with me.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jessaustin 8y ago
If we killed fewer innocents overseas, we'd have better karma.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

djsumdog 8y ago

Random crime in general is actually pretty rare. You are always most likely to be a victim of a crime by a family member, 2nd a person you know. Even in Brazil I bet a lot of this happens in communities, where they can try to justify violence due to some perceived slight. And of course let's not forget that America's crazy gun laws are pushed by gun lobbies because they help increase sales by creating an easy way to funnel guns into South and Central America. Much of the violence is there because of things like The School of the Americas and the work of US interests in promoting less democratic states to make it easier to gather resources (see the book: Confessions of an Economic Hitman). While it may not be directly related to the gang violence, those policies do spill over and make this sort of trend easier.

tomcam 8y ago
> America's crazy gun laws are pushed by gun lobbies because they help increase sales by creating an easy way to funnel guns into South and Central America. What? The Bill of Rights was that prescient? I assume it is our freedom of the press that’s responsible for the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf?
- simonh 8y ago
  Brit here, no but the Communist Manifesto is on us.
  - tomcam 8y ago
    My point exactly
briandear 8y ago
> let's not forget that America's crazy gun laws are pushed by gun lobbies because they help increase sales by creating an easy way to funnel guns into South and Central America. Could we please stick to facts? US gun laws have essentially no impact on this issue. Based on murder rates, it would seem like Brazil is the place with "crazy" gun laws. Shifting responsibility for Brazil's violence to US gun manufacturers is intellectually dishonest. Ultimately, Brazilians are pulling triggers and they're pulling triggers of mostly Brazilian weapons. US gun makers sell a lot more guns to Americans than Brazilians, yet Brazil has 63,880 homicides? The US had 17,250 homicides and over 125 million more people. The idea that Brazilian homicides are because of US gun makers is just absurd. Homicide rates don't directly correlate to gun availability. Mexico had 29,168 homicides in 2017 with a population of 200 million fewer people than in the US. And Mexico has some of the strictest gun laws anywhere. Venezuela has the third highest murder rate in the world and the influence of the US gun lobby is non-existent. Most weapons there have some sort of Soviet/Cuban/socialist origin. You won't find too many Smith and Wesson's on the streets of Caracas. Venezuela passed the "Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law" with the stated aim of disarming all citizens, with prison sentences up to 20 years for even possessing a gun. And what happened? The homicide rate rose from 73 per 100k to 90 per 100k (despite Maduro being known from undercounting crime.) Correlation doesn't imply causation of course, but the point is that Venezuela's homicide rates have nothing to do with the US gun lobby. It's absurd to even make such a connection. In Brazil, over 68% of guns seized by police were manufactured by Brazilian government subsidized firms including Taurus, Rossi, IMBEL and CBC. Most of these guns were purchased or stolen from Brazil. My 68% number comes from 2014, but here's a report from 2011-2012 that shows similar numbers: http://www.soudapaz.org/upload/file/relatorio_armas_do_crime_ingles_1.pdf http://www.soudapaz.org/upload/file/relatorio_armas_do_crime... The point is that some political cheap shot on US gun laws and the "gun lobby" isn't even relevant to this problem in Brazil. In terms of "assault" rifles, an AK-47 is more common in Brazil than US-manufactured weapons. So we could just as as much argue that leftist-government gun policies are just as much to blame since AK-47s are vestiges of the Soviet-Cuban-backed socialist revolutionary groups from the 1980s. But even that argument is weak considering the vast majority of weapons used in Brazilian violent crime are handguns of Brazilian origin. The point is, Brazilian violent crime is a Brazilian problem. Dragging US gun laws into this debate is just ridiculous since such an assertion isn't backed by any actual data.

sjs382 8y ago

Even here in New Orleans, violence tends to be between people who have a relationship with each other or at least know one another.

simonh 8y ago

>S population has increased by 10s of millions since then, but murders continue to drop. Yet mass shootings are becoming dramatically more common. What I find curious is that while the Brazilian murder rate is about 6 or 7 times that in the US, the rate of firearm related deaths is 'only' double. Is firearm suicide dramatically more common in the US, or are a lot of the murders perpetrated in Brazil not firearm related? It just seems odd.

shiftpgdn 8y ago
70-80% of all firearm deaths in the US are suicide related.
- jrace 8y ago
  Closer to 66%, https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-america/ https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-america/ Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides.5 The U.S. gun suicide rate is eight times that of other high-income countries.6 Access to a gun increases the risk of death by suicide by three times.7 Gun suicides are concentrated in states with high rates of gun ownership.8 Most people who attempt suicide do not die—unless they use a gun. Across all suicide attempts not involving a firearm, less than five percent will result in death.9 But for gun suicides, those statistics are flipped: approximately 85 percent of gun suicide attempts end in death
malandrew 8y ago
The US owns 40% of guns in the world. 4% of the world's population. Yet only 3.7% of homicides. Lots of the murders in Brazil are firearms related and it has very strong gun-control laws. The average citizen is not allowed to own a gun.

bluedino 8y ago

>> here were only around 13,000 murders last year in the US And 5% of those were in Chicago alone.

wenc 8y ago
Not sure why Chicago was brought up, but it is worth noting that it is a huge city with a population that is nearly the size of the entire state of Michigan. Despite popular imagination, in terms of per capita homicide rates, Chicago is actually middle of the pack. [1] Newark has a higher homicide rate. [1] https://www.thetrace.org/2018/04/highest-murder-rates-us-cities-list/ https://www.thetrace.org/2018/04/highest-murder-rates-us-cit...