>Red states tend to have a much higher population of black residents It sounds like you're taking the article to mean "voting Republican is causal to murder",

>Red states tend to have a much higher population of black residents It sounds like you're taking the article to mean "voting Republican is causal to murder", and are rebutting with "being black is causal to murder" (but are using a corollary fact to imply it). However, the first statement isn't being made by the article, and your implied rebuttal is neither verifiable nor does it even rebut the first statement, were the article making it. It's also unnecessarily provocative (unnecessary due to its irrelevance as described above). Of course this is all assumption you've forced me to make. By itself, the sentence you wrote doesn't say anything directly - you haven't connected it to the article explicitly. Your second paragraph has the same problem, but the implication is more obvious: You believe the properties you've listed cause high murder rates. That doesn't seem to be true, though - can you either elaborate subjectively, or provide some other writeup that points to that conclusion?