10 ms·

150 people fatally shot in more than 400 shootings over the 4th of July weekend

72 points by imartin2k 5y ago

cies 5y ago
The rest of the world has no clue what's going on with you guys. Seems like you have no clue either. Canadians (an many other nations) have guns, but no gun problems like the US.
- adventured 5y ago
  The vast majority of the US has a murder rate comparable to Canada in fact, while having a huge number of guns. Last year Chicago's so called top cop said the city has over 117,000 gang members that are part of 55 known gangs. That's merely one example, a few dozen other cities are similarly buried in homicides and gangs. If you actually wanted to do something about the US murder rate, it's very obvious where to begin fixing things. Nobody wants to talk about it, it's not a national discussion at all, it just keeps getting swept under the rug (while the dead bodies pile up, year after year).
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    If you cherry pick the data, you can have good numbers indeed.
  - laputan_machine 5y ago
    Per 100k people, the US has 3 times the murder rate of Canada. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/United-States/Crime https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/Uni... Edit: changed from 23 times to 3 times.
    - adventured 5y ago
      edit: parent changed their comment from claiming the US had a murder rate 23 times that of Canada --- False. Canada has a murder rate typically 1.5 to 2 per year (per 100k). The US murder rate is typically closer to 5. In 2019 there were an estimated 16,000 murders in the US (~4.8 per 100,000). From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Canada "After dropping to a low point of 1.44 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013, Canada's homicide rate has been rising again.[6] In 2015 the rate rose to 1.68 per 100,000 people, up from 1.47 the previous year.[7] According to Statistics Canada data from 2016, police reported 611 homicides across Canada in 2016, a rate of 1.68 per 100,000 people.[8] Canada's national homicide rate 2017 was the highest it's been in a decade, Statistics Canada says, because of a spike in gang-related violence and shootings. The agency said there were 660 reported homicides in Canada last year. Not only was that an increase of nearly eight per cent from 2016, it also pushed up the homicide rate to 1.8 victims for every 100,000 people, the highest since 2009"
      - laputan_machine 5y ago
        You're right, it's 'only' 3 times more, not 23 times more (per 100k).
    - nine_k 5y ago
      Not 23, but 2.5. 23 times is the absolute number, which is easy to explany with the differences of population.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      When making such a substantive edit (from 23x to 3x), it seems appropriate to disclose the edit.
      - laputan_machine 5y ago
        That's fair
    - okamiueru 5y ago
      Not that it really matters to anything, but the term is usually "Per capita" or per unit of population. It doesn't matter if it's per 100k, 200k, etc.
  - grokys 5y ago
    > If you actually wanted to do something about the US murder rate, it's very obvious where to begin fixing things. Nobody wants to talk about it, it's not a national discussion at all, it just keeps getting swept under the rug (while the dead bodies pile up, year after year). Gun control, you mean?
    - busymom0 5y ago
      Stop letting them use gun control to ignore the underlying issues in the community. ME: Chicago has strict gun control but high gun violence. THEM: They get guns from states with loose gun control. ME: But those states don't have the same gun violence THEM: Places in Chicago are poor & neglected so there's more violence. ME: BINGO, it's a socioeconomic issue not a gun issue! This site tracks Chicago specifically: https://heyjackass.com https://heyjackass.com 2020: 456 Homicides, 1,902 Wounded 2021 so far 6 months in: 378 Homicides, 1727 wounded, 2082 shot Until the gang problem gets solved, nothing will change. And politicians are too busy disarming the law abiding citizens and cutting police budgets instead of focusing on the illegal gang problem.
      - weavie 5y ago
        Maybe it's both.
      - onion2k 5y ago
        ME: BINGO, it's a socioeconomic issue not a gun issue! It could be both.
        cousin_it 5y ago
        It's not both. The root cause of most of these killings is honor culture, which existed in plenty of societies before guns and led to just as many killings.
      - ec109685 5y ago
        Chicago gun control laws were ruled unconstitutional, so there is no longer strict gun control there: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/oct/03/sarah-huckabee-sanders/chicago-toughest-gun-control-claim-shot-full-holes/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/oct/03/sarah-huck...
  - papito 5y ago
    Visiting/exchange doctors come here to pick up skills for combat zones because so many ER trauma shifts are going to have gun shot wounds. And if it's the work of the untouchable assault rifle, well, you are going to be learnin', boy!
  - test_epsilon 5y ago
    Outside these gangs, what is the murder rate like though? Surely still many times higher than Canada or Europe with all the rednecks and white supremacists and school shooters.
    - AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
      Actually, if remove gang related killings, the US gun murder rate is remarkably low.
      - kwhitefoot 5y ago
        It is in other countries too. What was your point?
      - test_epsilon 5y ago
        How low is remarkable, exactly? I can't really believe that.
  - kmm 5y ago
    If you're excluding the most violent areas in the US in your comparison, shouldn't you do the same for Canada as well?
    - adventured 5y ago
      I'm not excluding. There's no point in attempting to do that here on HN, I seriously doubt anybody here fails to at least vaguely understand the condition of US inner cities: they're war zones. The point is obvious: highly elevated rates of murder in the US are particularly hyper concentrated to a small number of urban zones, to a very abnormal degree. The high US murder rate isn't a comprehensive problem spanning all national population centers. You can't get anybody to talk about this fact though, they shout you down and or run away from it. You want proof of that? Normalize the murder rate for cities like Chicago, Baltimore, St Louis, Memphis, etc. to that of NYC or San Diego or Seattle or Austin TX circa 2019. Watch how the US murder rate dramatically plunges overall. St Louis had a 65 per 100k murder rate in 2019. Baltimore was 58. Birmingham was 50. Detroit was 41. Those are war zones. Kansas City and Memphis were 29. A city like eg Pittsburgh also has serious problems, but it's at least down at 12 (still high by any sane standard). If you reduce the high US murder cities down to just that (ridiculous) ceiling, you'd drop the US murder rate by a lot. Again, concentration is the obvious point, and it's very easy to prove. The obvious question is: what's being done to improve those high murder concentration areas? Not much is the answer. You can also see this concentration fact in action easily by comparing sections of Chicago or Baltimore, to the overall city murder rates, or the overall state murder rates (for IL or MD). It's not subtle, it's an extreme variance, far beyond what you see in eg Amsterdam vs the Netherlands or Toronto vs Ontario or Canada. It's not normal at all. The way people try to live in cities like Los Angeles or Chicago or Baltimore, is by entirely avoiding the extraordinarily dangerous areas. If it can be avoided people simply never go to those neighborhoods, they don't drive through there. They're de facto war zones, occupied territory owned by gangs, and everybody knows it (including the police). And this is the point that absolutely nobody at a high political level in the US wants to discuss, even though to fix the US murder problem you have to start talking about it. How to fix the US inner cities, which are in terrifying condition. You only ultimately fix the inner cities in the US through dramatic concentrated economic improvement, and looking back over the past several decades, neither party has done much of anything about it (the results of that are right there staring at us every day).
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    In large parts of the US you can get away with things that any other country would call murder or manslaughter, just by claiming that you were frightened or fearing for your life.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Single variable comparisons are always super helpful to have adult discussions.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Well it's approximately 4.5 years of shooting deaths in the UK in one day. Regardless of how you look at it, America has a serious problem.
    - nly 5y ago
      Annual deaths per capita would be more helpful
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        I agree, though I’d also exclude suicides (or break them out separately at a minimum).
        okamiueru 5y ago
        I did so for you in a sibling comment.
      - okamiueru 5y ago
        https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-death... Per 100k --- Total US 12.21, UK: 0.23 53 times higher. --- Homicides US 4.46, UK: 0.06 74 times higher. --- Suicides US 7.32, UK: 0.15 49 times higher.
    - amarshall 5y ago
      Huh? The data here isn’t for one day, it’s for three days. Further, population differences will massively inflate absolute numbers. You’re making it seem like US is ~1,600x UK when in fact per capita it’s ~61x [1]. Yes, this is still a lot and terrible, but you’re making it seem two orders of magnitude worse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
- ourculture 5y ago
  That’s just how we express our emotions in this country. It would be racist to suggest otherwise.
- DontTellAnyone 5y ago
  It's specifically the black community driving violent crime rates up to insane levels in the US. Canada only has a ~2% black population and many of them are skilled immigrants that immigrated in the past couple of decades. I guess if you're still clueless as to why all of this is happening you should read up on human biodiversity and the effects of genes on human behavior.
- busymom0 5y ago
  Comparing US to Canada is asinine. Canada has extremely low population density in all cities and population of 1/10th of US. US also has the third-highest population in the world. Look at the population density of the 10 highest dense municipalities in Canada (highest is 5,492.6 people per square kilometre in Vancouver, B.C.): https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/170208/t001a-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/170208/t001a... Now compare it to USA. Top 50 cities amongst them all are ALL signifiantly higher than the Canadian numbers. New York City alone is 10,431.1 people per square kilometre, San Francisco is 6,658.9, Boston is 5,143.4): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... Canada also doesn't share borders with cartels nor do they have a gang problem like places like Chicago, Baltimore etc do. Considering these factors, the 420+ million guns in US are pretty safe for vast majority. As someone pointed out "The Chicago MSA is just under 3% of the US population, and about 25% of the shootings." EDIT: Why the downvotes? Do people really think comparing 2 countries with completely different population density and borders is a valid comparison?
  - simonh 5y ago
    Where do you think the US, or significant parts of it with high gun violence rates should be compared to?
    - injb 5y ago
      Why should the whole country be compared to anywhere though? The idea (implicitly) is that it gives you a sense of what it's like to live in the US. But no one lives in the whole country. People live in a particular area, usually one state (out of 50). Even then, most people's lives are largely limited to one or two counties. The reason that most Americans are not concerned with this kind of thing is that the vast majority of them are not exposed to this violence at all. For most Americans, life is extremely safe and peaceful.
      - simonh 5y ago
        Perhaps you missed the part of my post where I said "or significant parts of it with high gun violence rates".
- fouc 5y ago
  To be honest, Canadians have way less guns & stronger gun control.
  - livinginfear 5y ago
    The raw data actually paints another picture entirely. As other posts here have hinted at, the incidence of gun violence in America is not evenly close to being evenly distributed geographically across the country. If you were to compare (legal) gun ownership and gun crime statistics between America's urban areas versus everywhere else you'd see the opposite picture emerge. It's not people in backwater towns with a shed full of guns responsible for America's gun crime problem. It's gang members in the large cities.
    - cies 5y ago
      I suspect its all about extreme inequality and a violent culture (wars, polarization, 2 party system).
- shrubble 5y ago
  The intersection of Jane and Finch in Toronto...?
- swiley 5y ago
  Canada has their own issues, their government effectively lost its mind last year. Maybe forcing everyone to take planes to enter the country will make the northern shore prime real estate though. Maybe they're behaving rationally and just have a very long term goal.
hortense 5y ago
We have no point of comparison. Is this more than usual?
- bart__ 5y ago
  Maybe it is normal? (in the U.S.). Wouldn't that be more insane?
- nextstep 5y ago
  This is about normal for the US, but quite high for anywhere else in the developed world. This long weekend had more gun deaths in the US than most developed countries have in a year. The only countries that have US-levels of gun violence are unstable Latin American nations and war-torn countries in Northern Africa: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/11/09/666209430/deaths-from-gun-violence-how-the-u-s-compares-with-the-rest-of-the-world?t=1625566490983 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/11/09/6662094...
- dmos62 5y ago
  According to this wiki article[0], 2018 (last year for which data is available) had around 14k non-suicide gun deaths. Looking at other figures suggests that this is close to the yearly average. So that's just under 40 non-suicide gun deaths per day in US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
- T-A 5y ago
  Second link in the article: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ Click "Past Years" for historical data going back to 2014: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls
- onion2k 5y ago
  Here's a point for comparison - the number of people who were killed by guns in the UK in the year prior to March 2019 (so pre-COVID) was 33.
  - 5y ago
CapitalistCartr 5y ago
Just some light small-arms fire on the grocery run. Weather report calls for lead to be up this weekend. --Florida Report
- bb88 5y ago
  "Be careful out there, Houston. Atmospheric lead is up 20% this week. Take your umbrella, and your body armor." https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/12/us/austin-texas-shooting-downtown/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/12/us/austin-texas-shooting-down...
ceilingcorner 5y ago
The vast majority are in specific places like the Southside of Chicago, a city with strict gun control. It turns out that America is a really big place and broad criticisms from abroad are almost always wrong and misleading.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  and Chicago violence is down year over year.
  - leereeves 5y ago
    > and Chicago violence is down year over year. It is? "Chicago saw 1,916 shootings through the first six months of the year, according to city records, an increase of almost 12 percent compared with 2020 and an increase of 55 percent over 2019." https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/7/2/22560417/4-killed-28-wounded-shootings-thursday-july-1-crime-homicide-chicago https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/7/2/22560417/4-kille...
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    Don't know where you get your stats from but that's not true based on a quick Google search. https://www.google.com/amp/s/chicago.suntimes.com/platform/amp/news/2020/3/16/21181886/chicago-violence-rise-43-percent-more-murders https://www.google.com/amp/s/chicago.suntimes.com/platform/a... For a real perspective on the violent hoods, CharlieBo313 visits them all and does interviews. Guns are pointed at him in many of them. Here's his latest Chicago video: https://youtu.be/UOeEykKtobs https://youtu.be/UOeEykKtobs
- meepmorp 5y ago
  > a city with strict gun control. ... in the middle of larger area with very lax gun control.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    Yet other cities have tons of guns, no gun control, and don’t have the same levels of crime. It’s almost like the issue is social and economic in nature...
alisonkisk 5y ago
Extremely misleading article. Article repeatedly says that "gun violence is rising", which may be true, but it cites exactly 2 comparative statistics: 1. Gun violence is down in NYC. 2. Gun violence is down in Chicago. > In New York, where gun violence has been rising to levels not seen in years, there were 26 victims from 21 shootings from Friday to Sunday, a DECREASE from the same period last year when 30 people were shot in 25 shootings.
- busymom0 5y ago
  Article is wrong about Chicago. This site tracks Chicago specifically: https://heyjackass.com https://heyjackass.com 2020: 456 Homicides, 1,902 Wounded 2021 so far 6 months in: 378 Homicides, 1727 wounded, 2082 shot
  - kaydub 5y ago
    You're only going to compare with 2020? The year we were all in lockdowns and quarantining? You don't think that'll skew things? Trends occur over many years, not just two.
- busterarm 5y ago
  1. Gun violence is down in NYC. > In New York, where gun violence has been rising to levels not seen in years, there were 26 victims from 21 shootings from Friday to Sunday, a DECREASE from the same period last year when 30 people were shot in 25 shootings. For the month of May, shootings were up 73% over last year. Robberies up 46.7% and felony assaults 20.5%. I'm glad that NYC's politburo was able to cherry pick a single weekend of statistics to frame in the positive but if you want to say gun violence is down, I'm gonna have to say "my ass".
MR4D 5y ago
95 of the shootings (roughly 1/4 of them) were in Chicago [0]. The Chicago MSA is just under 3% of the US population, and about 25% of the shootings. [0] - https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/criminal-justice/ct-independence-day-weekend-shootings-violence-20210705-krc6q7g7o5grzit3qpoavxlr3e-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/criminal-justice/ct-inde...
- me_me_me 5y ago
  That is a jaw drop statistic. This is just insane.
- dmos62 5y ago
  I enjoy the nickname Chiraq (as in Ch-Iraq). I've had French acquintances perplexed by this term, because there's been a French president called Jacques Chirac (pronounced the same way).
  - deviledeggs 5y ago
    Chiraq isn't an insult, that's what people living there call it.
    - dmos62 5y ago
      Chiraq is calling Chicago a warzone. I never thought it was an insult.
    - timelesscop 5y ago
      No we don't, 99.9% of Chicagoans aren't drill rappers.
      - deviledeggs 5y ago
        Hahaha. I lived there and we called it that all the time. More common among friends living on south side tho
        5y ago
busterarm 5y ago
I'll remember to keep this in mind while my house rep repeatedly gaslights us on rising violent crime statistics and calls our concerns about violent crime a "hysteria" while doubling down on her defund the police rhetoric. The moronic behavior of our elected officials in NYC has driven me to leave and sadly I will be gone long before they will.
- leereeves 5y ago
  Hasn't Eric Adams, the former police chief leading the race for mayor, promised to end that insanity? (And when are they going to finish counting those votes?)
  - busterarm 5y ago
    Nobody knows who the hell Eric Adams is. Even here in NY. He _barely_ won his primary. My rep that I mentioned earlier is nationally the press' darling.
    - addicted 5y ago
      The NYPD’s budget was “cut” to levels from 2 years ago to pre pandemic levels. The “cut” is also chimeric because the money to the NYPD was funneled through other avenues (for example, through the MTA, where Cuomo increased funding to the NYPD by getting the MTA to pay for NYPD presence in the subway funneling money to the NYPD without making it obvious at a time it wasn’t politically viable to increase police funding). That’s why headcount and the operational budget remained the same despite the “cut” and the fact that the NYPD officers received more overtime last year than probably every before. And the NYPD continues to remain the highest funded police force both on an absolute and a per capita basis by a favor of at least 2. Finally, next years budget already includes a further increase in the NYPD’s top line budget and neither of the possible remaining mayoral candidates (Adams or Garcia) have proposed reducing the budget. The idea that decisions about the NYPD have contributed to the increase in violent crime (which once again is nationwide) is not borne out by the actual changes that have been made.
- dmos62 5y ago
curiousgal 5y ago
The one part of the gun debate I don't understand is that the 2nd amendment was only added to prevent the government of overreaching as it gives the citizens the right to form armed militias to combat that. But realistically speaking, in a time where police forces are using military equipment, is it even possible to fight against them when/if push come to shove?
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  The actual military couldn’t make a dent in Afghanistan after twenty years. What makes you think they will be any more effective against local Americans who are more familiar with the terrain, have access to better tech, and often are of the same socioeconomic background of the soldiers themselves?
  - vcavallo 5y ago
    aren’t the weapons a bit different? or do you think rural americans are stockpiling rocket launchers and AK47s?
    - ceilingcorner 5y ago
      IEDs are the more commonly used weapons, and they aren’t hard to make. I also have zero doubts that if the military actually started fighting the civilian populace, more powerful weapons would get introduced (possibly by other states, as with in Afghanistan.)
      - natmaka 5y ago
        ... and, just like in Afghanistan (especially during the Soviet invasion in the 80's), rebels will ambush convoys/advanced bases and steal weaponry and associated material.
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        Military defection as well. The military has a lot of conservative pro-gun people.
jessaustin 5y ago
We're supposed to say "oh gosh we need gun control", and let's say that would probably have some effect. Few ever mention the disdain for human life required (and thus maintained by the war media) in order for a nominally democratic country to stay in multiple unjustified and disastrous wars on the other side of the planet for multiple decades. Our news channels, and other aspects of the capitalist popular media, constantly tell us to fear and preemptively murder brown and black people. So, we do. "We" in this case is white Americans, but it's also brown and black Americans. It's not as though this is a new thing. Fear and murderous intent for the natives of the continent was the real meaning of the bland phrase "manifest destiny". No sooner had we completed that genocide at the turn of the last century than we set our sights on more in Philippines and in various parts of Latin America. Since then only Europe has largely been spared our predations. The chickens have come home to roost, but this isn't some sort of wispy karmic phenomena. The causal chain is quite direct. In order for certain aspects of our capitalist model to function, we must destroy other nations at a regular rate. In order for the general population to abide such evil, we must be convinced to fear and hate other humans for their skin color. After we've been convinced of that, we fear and hate our neighbors just as much as we do the "intended" subjects of our fear and hate. This doesn't have to continue. However, in order for it to change, we've got to stop fighting so many stupid wars. That includes every war overseas, and every war against abstract concepts like the "Drug War".
simonh 5y ago
What I'd like to hear from Second Amendment advocates, is what their solution is to the frequency of gun violence in the USA. Is it actually a problem you think needs tackling, or is the current situation acceptable to you? If it's not acceptable, what's the path to improve things and what remedies would you support? I understand that you value this right, and yes it is in your constitution. Is that the end of the discussion though? After all, the constitution has been amended many times. It's not an absolute.
- injb 5y ago
  While we're at it, if you support the 1st amendment, what solution do you have in store for threats, incitement, defamation etc? What about the 4th amendment - presumably you have a solution to people hiding evidence of crimes right? And what's your solution to criminals refusing to consent to interviews with the police? Are you prepared to relinquish these rights if we don't find your solutions adequate?
  - simonh 5y ago
    Those are of course serious issues that any society has to work out. However the existence of those issues don't in any way detract from the existence and seriousness of this one, or provide any reason to neglect it.
    - injb 5y ago
      I'm not suggesting that these things justify neglecting it. What I'm responding to is your comment treating Second Amendment advocates as a class with respect to crime. Why should they, as a group, have any particular solution or perspective on this problem, more than anyone else? Maybe this isn't your attitude, and I'm not trying to misrepresent you here, but it's very common for people to expect a level of justification from 2A advocates that would seem absurd and unfair when applied to any other personal right (hence my examples). The implication is that the violence is somehow derived from right to own guns, and therefore people who fight to retain that right have a responsibility to come up with a solution.
matttproud 5y ago
Hallmarks of a failed state. Feels like the country is only a few years away from having balaclava-covered paramilitaries roam the streets in Toyota Hiluxes à la Afghanistan.
timelesscop 5y ago
Ah yes, a four day "weekend."
HeyZuess 5y ago
I am not American, and I think the rest of world has become somewhat immune to the gun violence in the US. A mass shooting here, a mass shooting there, pretty much every few days. I will even give a thumbs up to the right to bear arms, seems reasonable. But reading the context of that report is quite shocking, mass shootings (as per the definition of CNN), innocent bystanders, children, children with guns shooting other children, 18 people killed within 6 hours. The right to bear arms to fight an oppressive government, seems to be now the right to go out for a picnic with your kids and get shot. What a horrible cancerous situation.
xtalx 5y ago
Happy to see a multitude of poignant responses to comments here. It should be clear that “gun control” is very similar to the “war on drugs”. I guess a better corollary is the prohibition of cannabis. Folks (law abiding gun owners) helping their loved ones with debilitating diseases and what not are not able to do so, in the spirit of preventing bad outcomes for the general populace. We don’t need to control guns. We need to “control” the urge to commit violence. Politics obscure the target every time. *edited because I’ve had beers.

72 points by imartin2k 5y ago

cies 5y ago

The rest of the world has no clue what's going on with you guys. Seems like you have no clue either. Canadians (an many other nations) have guns, but no gun problems like the US.

adventured 5y ago
The vast majority of the US has a murder rate comparable to Canada in fact, while having a huge number of guns. Last year Chicago's so called top cop said the city has over 117,000 gang members that are part of 55 known gangs. That's merely one example, a few dozen other cities are similarly buried in homicides and gangs. If you actually wanted to do something about the US murder rate, it's very obvious where to begin fixing things. Nobody wants to talk about it, it's not a national discussion at all, it just keeps getting swept under the rug (while the dead bodies pile up, year after year).
- speedgoose 5y ago
  If you cherry pick the data, you can have good numbers indeed.
- laputan_machine 5y ago
  Per 100k people, the US has 3 times the murder rate of Canada. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/United-States/Crime https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/Uni... Edit: changed from 23 times to 3 times.
  - adventured 5y ago
    edit: parent changed their comment from claiming the US had a murder rate 23 times that of Canada --- False. Canada has a murder rate typically 1.5 to 2 per year (per 100k). The US murder rate is typically closer to 5. In 2019 there were an estimated 16,000 murders in the US (~4.8 per 100,000). From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Canada "After dropping to a low point of 1.44 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013, Canada's homicide rate has been rising again.[6] In 2015 the rate rose to 1.68 per 100,000 people, up from 1.47 the previous year.[7] According to Statistics Canada data from 2016, police reported 611 homicides across Canada in 2016, a rate of 1.68 per 100,000 people.[8] Canada's national homicide rate 2017 was the highest it's been in a decade, Statistics Canada says, because of a spike in gang-related violence and shootings. The agency said there were 660 reported homicides in Canada last year. Not only was that an increase of nearly eight per cent from 2016, it also pushed up the homicide rate to 1.8 victims for every 100,000 people, the highest since 2009"
    - laputan_machine 5y ago
      You're right, it's 'only' 3 times more, not 23 times more (per 100k).
  - nine_k 5y ago
    Not 23, but 2.5. 23 times is the absolute number, which is easy to explany with the differences of population.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    When making such a substantive edit (from 23x to 3x), it seems appropriate to disclose the edit.
    - laputan_machine 5y ago
      That's fair
  - okamiueru 5y ago
    Not that it really matters to anything, but the term is usually "Per capita" or per unit of population. It doesn't matter if it's per 100k, 200k, etc.
- grokys 5y ago
  > If you actually wanted to do something about the US murder rate, it's very obvious where to begin fixing things. Nobody wants to talk about it, it's not a national discussion at all, it just keeps getting swept under the rug (while the dead bodies pile up, year after year). Gun control, you mean?
  - busymom0 5y ago
    Stop letting them use gun control to ignore the underlying issues in the community. ME: Chicago has strict gun control but high gun violence. THEM: They get guns from states with loose gun control. ME: But those states don't have the same gun violence THEM: Places in Chicago are poor & neglected so there's more violence. ME: BINGO, it's a socioeconomic issue not a gun issue! This site tracks Chicago specifically: https://heyjackass.com https://heyjackass.com 2020: 456 Homicides, 1,902 Wounded 2021 so far 6 months in: 378 Homicides, 1727 wounded, 2082 shot Until the gang problem gets solved, nothing will change. And politicians are too busy disarming the law abiding citizens and cutting police budgets instead of focusing on the illegal gang problem.
    - weavie 5y ago
      Maybe it's both.
    - onion2k 5y ago
      ME: BINGO, it's a socioeconomic issue not a gun issue! It could be both.
      - cousin_it 5y ago
        It's not both. The root cause of most of these killings is honor culture, which existed in plenty of societies before guns and led to just as many killings.
    - ec109685 5y ago
      Chicago gun control laws were ruled unconstitutional, so there is no longer strict gun control there: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/oct/03/sarah-huckabee-sanders/chicago-toughest-gun-control-claim-shot-full-holes/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/oct/03/sarah-huck...
- papito 5y ago
  Visiting/exchange doctors come here to pick up skills for combat zones because so many ER trauma shifts are going to have gun shot wounds. And if it's the work of the untouchable assault rifle, well, you are going to be learnin', boy!
- test_epsilon 5y ago
  Outside these gangs, what is the murder rate like though? Surely still many times higher than Canada or Europe with all the rednecks and white supremacists and school shooters.
  - AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
    Actually, if remove gang related killings, the US gun murder rate is remarkably low.
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      It is in other countries too. What was your point?
    - test_epsilon 5y ago
      How low is remarkable, exactly? I can't really believe that.
- kmm 5y ago
  If you're excluding the most violent areas in the US in your comparison, shouldn't you do the same for Canada as well?
  - adventured 5y ago
    I'm not excluding. There's no point in attempting to do that here on HN, I seriously doubt anybody here fails to at least vaguely understand the condition of US inner cities: they're war zones. The point is obvious: highly elevated rates of murder in the US are particularly hyper concentrated to a small number of urban zones, to a very abnormal degree. The high US murder rate isn't a comprehensive problem spanning all national population centers. You can't get anybody to talk about this fact though, they shout you down and or run away from it. You want proof of that? Normalize the murder rate for cities like Chicago, Baltimore, St Louis, Memphis, etc. to that of NYC or San Diego or Seattle or Austin TX circa 2019. Watch how the US murder rate dramatically plunges overall. St Louis had a 65 per 100k murder rate in 2019. Baltimore was 58. Birmingham was 50. Detroit was 41. Those are war zones. Kansas City and Memphis were 29. A city like eg Pittsburgh also has serious problems, but it's at least down at 12 (still high by any sane standard). If you reduce the high US murder cities down to just that (ridiculous) ceiling, you'd drop the US murder rate by a lot. Again, concentration is the obvious point, and it's very easy to prove. The obvious question is: what's being done to improve those high murder concentration areas? Not much is the answer. You can also see this concentration fact in action easily by comparing sections of Chicago or Baltimore, to the overall city murder rates, or the overall state murder rates (for IL or MD). It's not subtle, it's an extreme variance, far beyond what you see in eg Amsterdam vs the Netherlands or Toronto vs Ontario or Canada. It's not normal at all. The way people try to live in cities like Los Angeles or Chicago or Baltimore, is by entirely avoiding the extraordinarily dangerous areas. If it can be avoided people simply never go to those neighborhoods, they don't drive through there. They're de facto war zones, occupied territory owned by gangs, and everybody knows it (including the police). And this is the point that absolutely nobody at a high political level in the US wants to discuss, even though to fix the US murder problem you have to start talking about it. How to fix the US inner cities, which are in terrifying condition. You only ultimately fix the inner cities in the US through dramatic concentrated economic improvement, and looking back over the past several decades, neither party has done much of anything about it (the results of that are right there staring at us every day).
- wongarsu 5y ago
  In large parts of the US you can get away with things that any other country would call murder or manslaughter, just by claiming that you were frightened or fearing for your life.
ekianjo 5y ago
Single variable comparisons are always super helpful to have adult discussions.
- hughrr 5y ago
  Well it's approximately 4.5 years of shooting deaths in the UK in one day. Regardless of how you look at it, America has a serious problem.
  - nly 5y ago
    Annual deaths per capita would be more helpful
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      I agree, though I’d also exclude suicides (or break them out separately at a minimum).
      - okamiueru 5y ago
        I did so for you in a sibling comment.
    - okamiueru 5y ago
      https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-death... Per 100k --- Total US 12.21, UK: 0.23 53 times higher. --- Homicides US 4.46, UK: 0.06 74 times higher. --- Suicides US 7.32, UK: 0.15 49 times higher.
  - amarshall 5y ago
    Huh? The data here isn’t for one day, it’s for three days. Further, population differences will massively inflate absolute numbers. You’re making it seem like US is ~1,600x UK when in fact per capita it’s ~61x [1]. Yes, this is still a lot and terrible, but you’re making it seem two orders of magnitude worse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
ourculture 5y ago
That’s just how we express our emotions in this country. It would be racist to suggest otherwise.
DontTellAnyone 5y ago
It's specifically the black community driving violent crime rates up to insane levels in the US. Canada only has a ~2% black population and many of them are skilled immigrants that immigrated in the past couple of decades. I guess if you're still clueless as to why all of this is happening you should read up on human biodiversity and the effects of genes on human behavior.
busymom0 5y ago
Comparing US to Canada is asinine. Canada has extremely low population density in all cities and population of 1/10th of US. US also has the third-highest population in the world. Look at the population density of the 10 highest dense municipalities in Canada (highest is 5,492.6 people per square kilometre in Vancouver, B.C.): https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/170208/t001a-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/170208/t001a... Now compare it to USA. Top 50 cities amongst them all are ALL signifiantly higher than the Canadian numbers. New York City alone is 10,431.1 people per square kilometre, San Francisco is 6,658.9, Boston is 5,143.4): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... Canada also doesn't share borders with cartels nor do they have a gang problem like places like Chicago, Baltimore etc do. Considering these factors, the 420+ million guns in US are pretty safe for vast majority. As someone pointed out "The Chicago MSA is just under 3% of the US population, and about 25% of the shootings." EDIT: Why the downvotes? Do people really think comparing 2 countries with completely different population density and borders is a valid comparison?
- simonh 5y ago
  Where do you think the US, or significant parts of it with high gun violence rates should be compared to?
  - injb 5y ago
    Why should the whole country be compared to anywhere though? The idea (implicitly) is that it gives you a sense of what it's like to live in the US. But no one lives in the whole country. People live in a particular area, usually one state (out of 50). Even then, most people's lives are largely limited to one or two counties. The reason that most Americans are not concerned with this kind of thing is that the vast majority of them are not exposed to this violence at all. For most Americans, life is extremely safe and peaceful.
    - simonh 5y ago
      Perhaps you missed the part of my post where I said "or significant parts of it with high gun violence rates".
fouc 5y ago
To be honest, Canadians have way less guns & stronger gun control.
- livinginfear 5y ago
  The raw data actually paints another picture entirely. As other posts here have hinted at, the incidence of gun violence in America is not evenly close to being evenly distributed geographically across the country. If you were to compare (legal) gun ownership and gun crime statistics between America's urban areas versus everywhere else you'd see the opposite picture emerge. It's not people in backwater towns with a shed full of guns responsible for America's gun crime problem. It's gang members in the large cities.
  - cies 5y ago
    I suspect its all about extreme inequality and a violent culture (wars, polarization, 2 party system).
shrubble 5y ago
The intersection of Jane and Finch in Toronto...?
swiley 5y ago
Canada has their own issues, their government effectively lost its mind last year. Maybe forcing everyone to take planes to enter the country will make the northern shore prime real estate though. Maybe they're behaving rationally and just have a very long term goal.

hortense 5y ago

We have no point of comparison. Is this more than usual?

bart__ 5y ago
Maybe it is normal? (in the U.S.). Wouldn't that be more insane?
nextstep 5y ago
This is about normal for the US, but quite high for anywhere else in the developed world. This long weekend had more gun deaths in the US than most developed countries have in a year. The only countries that have US-levels of gun violence are unstable Latin American nations and war-torn countries in Northern Africa: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/11/09/666209430/deaths-from-gun-violence-how-the-u-s-compares-with-the-rest-of-the-world?t=1625566490983 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/11/09/6662094...
dmos62 5y ago
According to this wiki article[0], 2018 (last year for which data is available) had around 14k non-suicide gun deaths. Looking at other figures suggests that this is close to the yearly average. So that's just under 40 non-suicide gun deaths per day in US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
T-A 5y ago
Second link in the article: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ Click "Past Years" for historical data going back to 2014: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls
onion2k 5y ago
Here's a point for comparison - the number of people who were killed by guns in the UK in the year prior to March 2019 (so pre-COVID) was 33.
- 5y ago

CapitalistCartr 5y ago

Just some light small-arms fire on the grocery run. Weather report calls for lead to be up this weekend. --Florida Report

bb88 5y ago
"Be careful out there, Houston. Atmospheric lead is up 20% this week. Take your umbrella, and your body armor." https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/12/us/austin-texas-shooting-downtown/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/12/us/austin-texas-shooting-down...

ceilingcorner 5y ago

The vast majority are in specific places like the Southside of Chicago, a city with strict gun control. It turns out that America is a really big place and broad criticisms from abroad are almost always wrong and misleading.

alisonkisk 5y ago
and Chicago violence is down year over year.
- leereeves 5y ago
  > and Chicago violence is down year over year. It is? "Chicago saw 1,916 shootings through the first six months of the year, according to city records, an increase of almost 12 percent compared with 2020 and an increase of 55 percent over 2019." https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/7/2/22560417/4-killed-28-wounded-shootings-thursday-july-1-crime-homicide-chicago https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/7/2/22560417/4-kille...
- goldenkey 5y ago
  Don't know where you get your stats from but that's not true based on a quick Google search. https://www.google.com/amp/s/chicago.suntimes.com/platform/amp/news/2020/3/16/21181886/chicago-violence-rise-43-percent-more-murders https://www.google.com/amp/s/chicago.suntimes.com/platform/a... For a real perspective on the violent hoods, CharlieBo313 visits them all and does interviews. Guns are pointed at him in many of them. Here's his latest Chicago video: https://youtu.be/UOeEykKtobs https://youtu.be/UOeEykKtobs
meepmorp 5y ago
> a city with strict gun control. ... in the middle of larger area with very lax gun control.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  Yet other cities have tons of guns, no gun control, and don’t have the same levels of crime. It’s almost like the issue is social and economic in nature...

alisonkisk 5y ago

Extremely misleading article. Article repeatedly says that "gun violence is rising", which may be true, but it cites exactly 2 comparative statistics: 1. Gun violence is down in NYC. 2. Gun violence is down in Chicago. > In New York, where gun violence has been rising to levels not seen in years, there were 26 victims from 21 shootings from Friday to Sunday, a DECREASE from the same period last year when 30 people were shot in 25 shootings.

busymom0 5y ago
Article is wrong about Chicago. This site tracks Chicago specifically: https://heyjackass.com https://heyjackass.com 2020: 456 Homicides, 1,902 Wounded 2021 so far 6 months in: 378 Homicides, 1727 wounded, 2082 shot
- kaydub 5y ago
  You're only going to compare with 2020? The year we were all in lockdowns and quarantining? You don't think that'll skew things? Trends occur over many years, not just two.
busterarm 5y ago
1. Gun violence is down in NYC. > In New York, where gun violence has been rising to levels not seen in years, there were 26 victims from 21 shootings from Friday to Sunday, a DECREASE from the same period last year when 30 people were shot in 25 shootings. For the month of May, shootings were up 73% over last year. Robberies up 46.7% and felony assaults 20.5%. I'm glad that NYC's politburo was able to cherry pick a single weekend of statistics to frame in the positive but if you want to say gun violence is down, I'm gonna have to say "my ass".

MR4D 5y ago

95 of the shootings (roughly 1/4 of them) were in Chicago [0]. The Chicago MSA is just under 3% of the US population, and about 25% of the shootings. [0] - https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/criminal-justice/ct-independence-day-weekend-shootings-violence-20210705-krc6q7g7o5grzit3qpoavxlr3e-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/criminal-justice/ct-inde...

me_me_me 5y ago
That is a jaw drop statistic. This is just insane.
dmos62 5y ago
I enjoy the nickname Chiraq (as in Ch-Iraq). I've had French acquintances perplexed by this term, because there's been a French president called Jacques Chirac (pronounced the same way).
- deviledeggs 5y ago
  Chiraq isn't an insult, that's what people living there call it.
  - dmos62 5y ago
    Chiraq is calling Chicago a warzone. I never thought it was an insult.
  - timelesscop 5y ago
    No we don't, 99.9% of Chicagoans aren't drill rappers.
    - deviledeggs 5y ago
      Hahaha. I lived there and we called it that all the time. More common among friends living on south side tho
      - 5y ago

busterarm 5y ago

I'll remember to keep this in mind while my house rep repeatedly gaslights us on rising violent crime statistics and calls our concerns about violent crime a "hysteria" while doubling down on her defund the police rhetoric. The moronic behavior of our elected officials in NYC has driven me to leave and sadly I will be gone long before they will.

leereeves 5y ago
Hasn't Eric Adams, the former police chief leading the race for mayor, promised to end that insanity? (And when are they going to finish counting those votes?)
- busterarm 5y ago
  Nobody knows who the hell Eric Adams is. Even here in NY. He _barely_ won his primary. My rep that I mentioned earlier is nationally the press' darling.
  - addicted 5y ago
    The NYPD’s budget was “cut” to levels from 2 years ago to pre pandemic levels. The “cut” is also chimeric because the money to the NYPD was funneled through other avenues (for example, through the MTA, where Cuomo increased funding to the NYPD by getting the MTA to pay for NYPD presence in the subway funneling money to the NYPD without making it obvious at a time it wasn’t politically viable to increase police funding). That’s why headcount and the operational budget remained the same despite the “cut” and the fact that the NYPD officers received more overtime last year than probably every before. And the NYPD continues to remain the highest funded police force both on an absolute and a per capita basis by a favor of at least 2. Finally, next years budget already includes a further increase in the NYPD’s top line budget and neither of the possible remaining mayoral candidates (Adams or Garcia) have proposed reducing the budget. The idea that decisions about the NYPD have contributed to the increase in violent crime (which once again is nationwide) is not borne out by the actual changes that have been made.
dmos62 5y ago

curiousgal 5y ago

The one part of the gun debate I don't understand is that the 2nd amendment was only added to prevent the government of overreaching as it gives the citizens the right to form armed militias to combat that. But realistically speaking, in a time where police forces are using military equipment, is it even possible to fight against them when/if push come to shove?

ceilingcorner 5y ago
The actual military couldn’t make a dent in Afghanistan after twenty years. What makes you think they will be any more effective against local Americans who are more familiar with the terrain, have access to better tech, and often are of the same socioeconomic background of the soldiers themselves?
- vcavallo 5y ago
  aren’t the weapons a bit different? or do you think rural americans are stockpiling rocket launchers and AK47s?
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    IEDs are the more commonly used weapons, and they aren’t hard to make. I also have zero doubts that if the military actually started fighting the civilian populace, more powerful weapons would get introduced (possibly by other states, as with in Afghanistan.)
    - natmaka 5y ago
      ... and, just like in Afghanistan (especially during the Soviet invasion in the 80's), rebels will ambush convoys/advanced bases and steal weaponry and associated material.
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      Military defection as well. The military has a lot of conservative pro-gun people.

jessaustin 5y ago

We're supposed to say "oh gosh we need gun control", and let's say that would probably have some effect. Few ever mention the disdain for human life required (and thus maintained by the war media) in order for a nominally democratic country to stay in multiple unjustified and disastrous wars on the other side of the planet for multiple decades. Our news channels, and other aspects of the capitalist popular media, constantly tell us to fear and preemptively murder brown and black people. So, we do. "We" in this case is white Americans, but it's also brown and black Americans. It's not as though this is a new thing. Fear and murderous intent for the natives of the continent was the real meaning of the bland phrase "manifest destiny". No sooner had we completed that genocide at the turn of the last century than we set our sights on more in Philippines and in various parts of Latin America. Since then only Europe has largely been spared our predations. The chickens have come home to roost, but this isn't some sort of wispy karmic phenomena. The causal chain is quite direct. In order for certain aspects of our capitalist model to function, we must destroy other nations at a regular rate. In order for the general population to abide such evil, we must be convinced to fear and hate other humans for their skin color. After we've been convinced of that, we fear and hate our neighbors just as much as we do the "intended" subjects of our fear and hate. This doesn't have to continue. However, in order for it to change, we've got to stop fighting so many stupid wars. That includes every war overseas, and every war against abstract concepts like the "Drug War".

simonh 5y ago

What I'd like to hear from Second Amendment advocates, is what their solution is to the frequency of gun violence in the USA. Is it actually a problem you think needs tackling, or is the current situation acceptable to you? If it's not acceptable, what's the path to improve things and what remedies would you support? I understand that you value this right, and yes it is in your constitution. Is that the end of the discussion though? After all, the constitution has been amended many times. It's not an absolute.

injb 5y ago
While we're at it, if you support the 1st amendment, what solution do you have in store for threats, incitement, defamation etc? What about the 4th amendment - presumably you have a solution to people hiding evidence of crimes right? And what's your solution to criminals refusing to consent to interviews with the police? Are you prepared to relinquish these rights if we don't find your solutions adequate?
- simonh 5y ago
  Those are of course serious issues that any society has to work out. However the existence of those issues don't in any way detract from the existence and seriousness of this one, or provide any reason to neglect it.
  - injb 5y ago
    I'm not suggesting that these things justify neglecting it. What I'm responding to is your comment treating Second Amendment advocates as a class with respect to crime. Why should they, as a group, have any particular solution or perspective on this problem, more than anyone else? Maybe this isn't your attitude, and I'm not trying to misrepresent you here, but it's very common for people to expect a level of justification from 2A advocates that would seem absurd and unfair when applied to any other personal right (hence my examples). The implication is that the violence is somehow derived from right to own guns, and therefore people who fight to retain that right have a responsibility to come up with a solution.

matttproud 5y ago

Hallmarks of a failed state. Feels like the country is only a few years away from having balaclava-covered paramilitaries roam the streets in Toyota Hiluxes à la Afghanistan.

timelesscop 5y ago

Ah yes, a four day "weekend."

HeyZuess 5y ago

I am not American, and I think the rest of world has become somewhat immune to the gun violence in the US. A mass shooting here, a mass shooting there, pretty much every few days. I will even give a thumbs up to the right to bear arms, seems reasonable. But reading the context of that report is quite shocking, mass shootings (as per the definition of CNN), innocent bystanders, children, children with guns shooting other children, 18 people killed within 6 hours. The right to bear arms to fight an oppressive government, seems to be now the right to go out for a picnic with your kids and get shot. What a horrible cancerous situation.

xtalx 5y ago

Happy to see a multitude of poignant responses to comments here. It should be clear that “gun control” is very similar to the “war on drugs”. I guess a better corollary is the prohibition of cannabis. Folks (law abiding gun owners) helping their loved ones with debilitating diseases and what not are not able to do so, in the spirit of preventing bad outcomes for the general populace. We don’t need to control guns. We need to “control” the urge to commit violence. Politics obscure the target every time. *edited because I’ve had beers.