Why so many murders?
POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Monday, April 13, 2026 04:37
VIEWED: 4147
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SignyM had an interesting question in another thread that I thought would be worthwhile spinning off.
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
So why do SOME countries- such as ours- have such a phenomenally high murder rate, especially compared with our relative wealth, stability, and incarceration rate?
Now that's a good question, and one I've asked myself before. A lot of statistics about murder and murderers are, for some reason, difficult to find. Geographic stuff is pretty common, as is age breakdown. Ethnicity is harder to come by, and income and education is really difficult, at least on the internet.
Just for some background I went to Nationmaster.com and checked murder rates. They have a function which finds correlations between data points, and the closest (82%) was that nations with the highest per capita murder rate also have the highest proved oil reserves as a share of total reserves. Somehow I suspect that this isn't really it.
I tend to think that some of the reason is that we have a relatively new and extremely diverse population, and that we haven't worn all the rough edges off yet, as they have in places where folk have lived thousands of years. I'll have to look into national murder rates in relation to settlement and diversity.
You have any notions?
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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I too thought it was a great question and was about to answer Sig in his original thread. What would be interesting would be to get a breakdown of murder by motive. What percentage were
1) Crimes of passion (killing hubby/wife/gf/bf)
2) crimes for gain (ie killing granny for the inheritance, business partner for money)
3) Murder in support of a crime (drugs/robbery)
4) Murder in support of sexually motivated crime (rape, sexual assault, sexual sadism)
5) other. (mainly psychological illness)
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
I too thought it was a great question and was about to answer Sig in his original thread. What would be interesting would be to get a breakdown of murder by motive. What percentage were
1) Crimes of passion (killing hubby/wife/gf/bf)
2) crimes for gain (ie killing granny for the inheritance, business partner for money)
3) Murder in support of a crime (drugs/robbery)
4) Murder in support of sexually motivated crime (rape, sexual assault, sexual sadism)
5) other. (mainly psychological illness)
Haven't looked at all the multitude of tables available here, but the Uniform Crime Reporting program has tons of data, seemingly a lot more than the last time I checked it a few years ago.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/index.html
And here's an interesting bit about the circumstances behind homicides. Not quite as detailed as your breakdown, but still pretty telling.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/circumst.htm#reasons
This bit caught my eye.
"(homicides)involving adult or juvenile gang violence increased almost 8 fold since 1976."
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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8 fold, you say?
That is just plain scary. Maybe America has a habit of attracting all of the psychos from everywhere else. I wouldn't be surprised- most anyone can get in- even with elephants!
-Danny
We move for all mankind,
A million miles from everything we've ever know...
We're on their hearts and minds,
A million heads are bowed to bring us safely home...
Hemmed in by emptiness,
A million ways that everything could be undone...
THRICE RULES!!!!!!!!!
http://www.myspace.com/otherrandomdude
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I believe this is the table we need.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/offenses/expanded_information/data/shr
table_09.html
For this year there were 14,990 victims.
Using general headings
1) Domestic (love triangles murderous babysiters etc) 130 -- 0.9%
2) Robbery/larceny/burglary -- 1149 7.7%
3) sex crimes -- 50 - 0.3%
4) Drink/Drug induced brawls -- 158 - 1%
5) Argument over property -- 198 -- 1.3%
6) Other arguments 3,607 -- 24%
7) Drug crime -- 796 -- 5.3%
8) Juv/ gangland killings 983 - 9.6%
However about half the cases had unknown/unreported reasons.
It seems that the biggest cause of murder are arguments of one kind or another, especially if under the influence.
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Question: "Why so many murders?"
Answer: Unarmed victims.
Case closed.
-F
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Question: "Why so many murders?"
Answer: Unarmed victims.
Case closed.
-F
If you saw the 'News at Six' vids of gang related shootings here in metro D.C. you wouldn't think so. Tons of brass casings on both sides of the event. The intended victims are usually packing too. Unfortunately, the gangstas, both shooters and shootees, are such poor shots that it's the babies in cribs and grannies in their living rooms who usually end up getting hurt. Maybe we should start a "teach a gang-banger to shoot" program and stop the collateral damage to innocent babies and grannies.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Hello,
I am an advocate of gun ownership, but I don't think that 'unarmed victims' are the REASON behind so many homicides.
From the chart posted above, it would seem that the largest percentage of all homicides occur due to "Arguments."
This tells me that we, as human beings, really can't abide one another. We don't tolerate each other well, and we don't handle our ire well.
I will offer a postulation: Our society places far less emphasis on social graces than it used to. Please and Thank You are becoming rarer daily. It almost seems that when we became politically correct and threw out harmful stereotypes and hurtful words, we also discarded the antiquated concepts of honor and politeness.
And without that firmly ingrained concept of honor and mutual respect, there is no social buffer to stand between stimulus and response. There is no programmed conditioning to stand between anger and fist. Or knife. Or gun. There is no consideration for others, merely a selfish focus on one's self and one's own desires and need for gratification, glorification, and satisfaction.
I think this is the REASON behind homicides. We threw out the baby with the bathwater.
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Question: "Why so many murders?"
Answer: Unarmed victims.
Case closed.
-F
Well as most of the deaths were arguments I'm suspecting more guns will not solve the problem. If you could condense the "average" murder down it would seem somebody gets drunk or high and kills someone else.
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I suspect that my position on this is not going to well accepted by either side, and it’s largely speculation, but I think it explains the difference between the crime in the US and that in Europe. The reason why there is more violent crime in the US is because the average poor person has too much independence and too much money. Let me explain, most European countries are Welfare States where the poor are heavily dependent on the government for their welfare. Their cooperation has essentially been bought, moreorless. Which isn’t cheap, the cooperation is directly related to the transfer of wealth to the lower classes. The state must provide relatively considerable wealth to the poor in order to disincentivize criminal activity, US welfare is not enough. But the US economy is so much more vibrant then the European economy that the US can afford to provide its poor with substantially better wealth as the standard. The average American poor lives in a bigger house/apartment then the average middle class European. They drive a bigger car, are more likely to own household amenities, such dishwashers and the like. They eat more expensive food, such as meat. The US provides much more wealth to its poor, but this wealth is not seen as coming from the government to compensate for the “injustice” of being poor, it is simply part of the wealthy landscape created by the American economy unburdened by huge taxation needed to run a Welfare state. It’s a little bit ironic, but the American poor are more restless then the European poor.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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