You think Chicago has the worst homicide rate?

[BainsBane]

Wrong.

[chillfactor]

1. bookmarked the link...

great ammunition to use on trolls who keep hyping the Chicago rate of homicides in their rants..thank you!

[BainsBane]

3. Note that this is 2011

The rate in 2012 is likely higher, but it has since dropped for 2013

[mucifer]

4. I went to the FBI website. It seems that 2011 is the most recent stats they have.

[Skittles]

2. gun humpers LOVE using Chicago

their ignorance is staggering

[friendly_iconoclast]

12. Just as you lot studiously avoid discussing Houston

I can see why- it kind of derails the meme that 'gun availability drives crime'
when a gun-friendly megacity in a gun-friendly state that's surrounded by gun-friendly
states has a murder rate that's less than half of Chicago's

From the link in the poster:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-6

Crime in The United States 2011

City of Chicago

Population: 2,703,713 431 murders

City of Houston

Population: 2,143,628 198 murders

[Skittles]

23. "you lot"

LOLOL

[Squinch]

29. Did you read the OP?

[BainsBane]

41. Like 'you lot"

pretend Japan doesn't exist.

No one with a functioning brain stem thinks more guns actually lead to fewer shootings. I don't believe even the most die hard gun evangelist believes that. They simply do not care.

[friendly_iconoclast]

50. Too bad for you that I didn't say "more guns actually lead to fewer shootings."

What statistics show is that more guns don't necessarily lead to more shootings.

[friendly_iconoclast]

54. Japan has a *very* high homicide rate, mostly due to suicides.

I daresay Japanese suicides are no less dead for largely not having used a firearm.

[Heywood J]

49. When do you plan on addressing the data from other countries regarding murder rates and

gun availability? Just curious...

[friendly_iconoclast]

51. Murder rates and gun availability don't track exactly.

Jamaica and Mexico have few legal guns available to the public but have horrible murder rates.

Finland and Switzerland have high rates of civilian gun ownership, but far lower murder rates than
the US.

The US has a murder problem and a gun culture. They aren't the same thing.

[Heywood J]

56. No, but one does appear to feed off the other.

It's difficult from this end to see how pumping out millions of firearms (of all kinds) year after year in a country already afloat in them can help with a murder problem. If it did, you'd think we would have seen it by now.

I would be curious to see the statistics on the type of firearm ownership - e.g. do the Finns or Swiss own mostly hunting rifles, antiques, or semi-automatics?

[friendly_iconoclast]

58. The murder rate in the US has been declining since at least 1991, per the FBI

And all this while the number of guns skyrocketed.
You don't have to take my word for it- just use the Crime In The United States site, per the OP:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/1995/95sec2.pdf

(Chart 2.6)

and Table 2.3

Rate
Down 9 percent from 1994, the national murder rate in 1995
was 8 per 100,000 inhabitants, the lowest rate since 1985. Five and 10-year trends showed
the 1995 rate was 16 percent lower than in 1991 and 5 percent below the 1986 rate...

The Finns and Swiss mostly own rifles, the Swiss ones tend to be semi-automatic (the dreaded
"assault weapons", iow)

[hack89]

59. We have cut our murder rate in half over the past 20 years

it is hard to argue that more guns = more gun violence when the hard facts say exactly the opposite.

[Heywood J]

61. Perhaps the murder rate is down, but the population growth rate is also down.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-31/u-s-on-pace-for-slowest-decade-of-population-growth-since-1930s.html
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/20/2012-census-state-populations/1781993/
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/05/13/7-ways-the-us-population-is-changing

I don't know that it's possible to sort any one of these factors out from the others.

To be fair, I care far less about someone owning a rifle for hunting two weeks out of the year than I do about the apparent ability of people with proven histories of mental instability to obtain anything they like.

[hack89]

62. Murders are down in absolute numbers

there are simply fewer murders now then there were 20 years ago regardless of population.

The solution to people with mental health issues getting guns is single payer health care with full mental care coverage. Lets fix root issues.

[Hoyt]

79. I bet it would have declined even more if we stopped coddling yahoos who arm up.

Instead the right wing gun lobby allowed/encouraged100 million more guns to be produced to soothe baser instincts of gun cultists.

[suffragette]

63. Don't the Swiss have an actual militia

Many of whom keep their guns at home?
That would also account for the type of gun you note below.

[friendly_iconoclast]

64. Yes, and they also have less income inequality and more social homogeniety than we do.

[Hoyt]

80. And, they require that single gun to be locked up, restrict toting, severely limit amount

of ammo people can keep, etc. You know, the kind of reasonable restrictions that would make gun cultists here, pucker.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. Those data are inaccurate

Here's the top 10 cities for murder rate:
City Population Murders per 100,000 people
1. Flint, Mich. 101,632 61.98
2. Detroit, Mich. 707,096 54.58
3. New Orleans 362,874 53.18
4. Jackson, Miss. 175,939 35.8
5. St. Louis, Mo. 318,667 35.46
6. Baltimore, Md. 625,474 35.01
7. Newark, N.J. 278,906 34.06
8. Oakland, CA. 399,487 31.54
9. Birmingham 213,266 31.42
10. Baton Rouge 231,500 28.5

Chicago, which is consistently in the national headlines for its gun violence, ranked 16th with 18.46 murders per 100,000 people, behind cities like Cleveland, Memphis, Richmond, Va., and Atlanta, though it was second among cities with more than one million residents, behind Philadelphia (21.5). New York City's murder rate was 5 per 100,000 people.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-06-03/news/bal-baltimore-ranked-6th-in-murder-rate-in-2012-20130603_1_murder-rate-top-10-cities-per-capita-murders

On edit: the data above are for the city limits; using metropolitan areas is misleading.

[mucifer]

6. I think the issue with Chicago is that there is such segregation.

I'd like to know if in these other cities the violent crime is as concentrated in a few neighborhoods the way it is in Chicago. I live in Chicago and know in certain areas it is unbearable and has been for decades.

[frazzled]

16. It's pretty segregated in housing, but ...

it's one of the least segregated Northern cities, imo, in terms of mixes of people in the life of the city itself. Ride the El, take a bus, go to Millennium Park for a concert, have lunch in the Loop with workers, go to a club (well, certain clubs) ... this is a very black/white city in that sense.

I moved here from Boston (before that, Minneapolis and NYC). I mean, you rarely see a black person in Boston, unless they're on the faculty at one of the universities or at a law firm. Yet I know Roxbury is still very black. My husband just got back from New York and had gone up to Harlem one evening to eat dinner. He said, you know, Chicago really is a much more black city than New York, until you get into certain areas. Midtown Manhattan and downtown Chicago are like night and day, pretty much, in that respect. In the working parts of the city, it's a much more mixed environment.

I ride the Green line a lot, so maybe I see more black faces every day than people who live up on the North Side and take the Brown line. The Green line goes from the concentration of black neighborhoods on the West Side to the concentration of black neighborhoods on the South Side. But neighborhoods in between also have a rising middle-class black population.

I don't ignore the deep pockets of black poverty in certain neighborhoods that has existed since the Great Migration. But I also love to say, eat Sunday breakfast at Valois, down in Hyde Park, where the Church families and the U of C professors, the old black guys in their suspenders talking politics, and young white families are all eating together. Or go to the jazz festival around Labor Day, where everyone sits under the stars together. I think it feels like the real America. Not one I see very much anywhere else.

Grant Park in November 2004 ... now that was Chicago. At least for a moment.

[mucifer]

20. THere is a huge issue in Chicago with Regard to Race Crime and Poverty:

I'm a hospice nurse and I work all over the city including the south and west sides and I do see a lot of segregation. I've never been to Boston. The statistics show that there are a very few very impoverished African American neighborhoods where most of the violent crime is taking place.

From The Chicago Reader:

Concentrated poverty and homicide in Chicago
Posted by Steve Bogira on 07.26.12 at 02:22 PM
Poverty, Race, and Homicide in Chicago Community Areas:

I posted here recently about the role of concentrated poverty in Chicago's murder rate. I wrote that sufficiency of police protection was not the key issue in the murder rate—that "violent crime in Englewood and West Garfield Park will continue to run rampant as long as poverty's clustered there."

The chart above illustrates the relationship between concentrated poverty and homicide. I culled figures from a data set published earlier this month by the Chicago Department of Public Health. The chart shows the five poorest, and five least-poor, community areas in the city (based on the percentage of households below the poverty line), and their homicide rates from 2004 through 2008. Because concentrated poverty in Chicago is inextricably linked to being African-American, I've also included the percentage of African-Americans in these community areas, calculated from 2005-2009 Census Bureau estimates.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2012/07/26/concentrated-poverty-and-homicide-in-chicago

I must say I was at Grant Park in 2004 and I was totally blown away by the emotion of the potential for racial harmony.

[frazzled]

22. Yup, it's a sad formula

Race = poverty = increase in crime

Will this cycle ever be broken here? One factor we haven't discussed is youth. Most of these homicides are among the very young, and much of it is gang-related. Here the problem we have is related in large part to the reign of gangs in these neighborhoods. There are many, many good people living in Englewood and Garfield Park ... but they're living in terror of this gang activity. Solve that, and you'll see the homicide rate really go down, even if segregation, poverty, and some elements persist.

Bless you for the work you do for people as a hospice nurse. You're one brave and dedicated person.

[elehhhhna]

46. as a chicagoan now texan,

People don't know how segregated Chgo is. I didn't know until we moved - that's just how Chicago always was. We now live in the most diverse county in the US (yes, in Texas). Weird.

[BainsBane]

8. Your numbers are for 2012, the chart is for 2011

but it is helpful to have the more recent figures.

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. It's still inaccurate

look at the bottom of that poster: "data reflects metropolitan statistical areas". The numbers I posted are for within the city limits.

[BainsBane]

44. I wonder how the FBI lists crime stats

I would guess by municipality.

[friendly_iconoclast]

53. They list them by city and also by MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area)

For example, per the CITUS 2011 site in the OP, the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX M.S.A.
had a muder rate of 5.4/100,000.

[hfojvt]

32. to me, a metro area defines a city

more than the rather arbitrary city boundaries do.

But it is interesting about the rates, that apparently more murders happen in the cities than do in the suburbs. Perhaps because there is more poverty in the cities than in the suburbs.

[Spider Jerusalem]

38. No, it's because of population density.

I don't see a metro area as defining a city at all. A city isn't a suburb.

[hfojvt]

42. a city isn't a suburb

but it is rather absurd to call St. Louis a city of 350,000 like that 350,000 is somehow comparable to the population of Topeka at 124,000. Really? St. Louis is only 3 times the size of Topeka? It's smaller then than Wichita at 370,000? And so is Minneapolis? Ridiculous.

[Warren Stupidity]

48. The metro area is based on density and is the standard statistical demographic object

For cities.

[Spider Jerusalem]

67. No, it isn't, and no, it's not.

The metro area is based on economic ties to the core city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area

[X_Digger]

33. Correct.. using city limits, here's the 2011 list..

LOUISIANA New Orleans 58
MICHIGAN Flint 51
MICHIGAN Detroit 48
MISSOURI St. Louis 35
NEW JERSEY Newark 34
MARYLAND Baltimore 31
MISSISSIPPI Jackson 30
LOUISIANA Baton Rouge 28
CALIFORNIA Oakland 26
CONNECTICUT New Haven 26

[otohara]

7. Pro Gun Talkiing Points

always try to minimize the damage of guns and point straight to Chicago with glee.

It's downright creepy.

Thanks for posting this...every little bit of truth helps.

[friendly_iconoclast]

14. Why do guns cause less damage in decidedly pro-gun Houston?

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-6

City of Houston

2,143,628 198 murders

City of Chicago

2,703,713 431 murders


Why does Chicago have more of a problem? One word: Poverty

[derby378]

18. My wife spent much of her childhood in Houston - she bragged on their schools

They went far behind the "readin', writin' and 'rithmetic" fundamentals, insisting on a well-rounded education that included exposure to the fine arts. ChickMagic fondly remembers school field trips to see the city's symphony orchestra perform. Her grades were above average.

And then when her father got transferred to Dallas, our school system didn't know what to do with her, so they just stuck her in an LLD class with the head cases and the slow students. I've been in LLD classes in my earlier years due to ADHD, and ChickMagic had no business being in such a learning environment.

But I digress. Houston is obviously doing something right.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

35. Two Words - Poverty and Gangs

Chicago has a mind-boggling amount of gang activity, and the overwhelming majority of homicides are gang related.

[alphafemale]

9. I'd have guessed Detroit or New Orleans.

Stats in thread on Flint floored me.

[FarCenter]

11. Flint is a depopulated urban core like Detroit

Population is down 50% since 1960 leaving 100 K population that is 57% African American in a metro area of 422 K population.

[valerief]

13. Now that's breaking wind. nt

[Iliyah]

15. I thought Los Angeles

would be there somewhere.

[coldmountain]

17. Isn't Gary Indiana right over the border from Chicago in a pro gun state one of the worst?

[pintobean]

19. I think the point has been Chicago's gun ban

and how it's had little to no affect on the gun crime statistics. I know St. Louis doesn't have a gun ban, but it's not legal guns that are driving those statistics.

[BainsBane]

21. Well, a gunner told me that ban was repealed in 2010

[pintobean]

25. That's for possession

Carrying, open or concealed, is still illegal. CCW is a new state law and implementation is still in the works.

On July 12, 2010 a new Chicago city ordinance took effect that allows limited handgun possession after passing a firearms training course and obtaining a permit from the police

ETA link

[BainsBane]

28. That hardly constitutes a ban then

I appreciate the clarification.

[pintobean]

30. I guess that depends on what "limited" means

and who is applying.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

36. The point from the pro-gun side has been that the ban drove the stats up.

Not that it had little to no affect.

[Eleanors38]

43. Mmm, not really. Pro 2A folks said the nearly 40 yr. Ban...

had no measureable positive effect on Chicago's murder rate.

[Hoyt]

81. What ban? Tens of millions of guns have been produced during that 40 years, and legally available

throughout USA. Easily transported to Chicago, or elsewhere.

[Eleanors38]

82. Oh, Chi had bans alright. But you don't want to acknowledge the flaws of prohibition:

People get around them.

[LWolf]

24. Er...no. I didn't think that. nt

[OldRedneck]

26. Notice . . .

Notice that of the ten cities with murder rates higher than Chicago . . . seven of the ten are in RED states . . . KS, LA, AL, FL, TN, OK, MI

[X_Digger]

31. Actually.. check prelim 2012 data..

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/preliminary-annual-uniform-crime-report-january-december-2012/tables/table-4

MICHIGAN DETROIT 54.6
LOUISIANA NEW ORLEANS 53.2
MISSOURI ST. LOUIS 35.5
MARYLAND BALTIMORE 35.0
NEW JERSEY NEWARK 34.1
CALIFORNIA OAKLAND 31.5
CALIFORNIA STOCKTON 23.7
MISSOURI KANSAS CITY 22.6
PENNSYLVANIA PHILADELPHIA 21.5
OHIO CLEVELAND 21.3

Looks about 50/50 to me.

[SunSeeker]

27. Wow. The News Orleans rate is beyond belief. nt

[RB TexLa]

37. We've always been like that. It's part of our culture, we murder one another.

[NewThinkingChance40]

34. Wait a minute...

Detroit still has 100,00 people

I kid, I kid, Seriously though, would not know this from the numbers the news reports. Thanks for the info.

[Posteritatis]

39. Guh; those are all pretty alarming

I'm in what is, by some standards, the second most violent city in Canada and our homicide rate's around 4.4. (The highest is Winnipeg, at a little over 5.)

I can't wrap my head around 20 or 24.

[BainsBane]

40. That's what happens when people think freedom is defined by guns

It's a national sickness.

[Pelican]

45. Got it... Yeah, Chicago is awful and their policies have failed...

... but look at how terrible and awful other people are for other reasons!

[BainsBane]

47. Try reading

This is simply a listing of homicide rates. Throughout the US, the reason is the same, guns. That is why we have the highest homicide rate in the First World, and that is exactly how gun evangelists want it.

[cherokeeprogressive]

57. There are actually people who WANT the United States to have the highest homicide rate

in the First World? To what end?

I would also ask... when you say "that is exactly how gun evangelists want it", does that mean you're citing some kind of fact or is it just your opinion? Is there a link you can provide where proven facts lead to the conclusion that "gun evangelists" want the United States to have the highest homicide rate in the first world?

The reason I ask is I've found you to post some pretty convincing arguments about a wide range of subjects in the past, but when you use hyperbole and pejoratives like you did there, it makes you no better than Hoyt, whose pronouncements about guns carry about as much weight as hydrogen.

[BainsBane]

72. The gun industry wants gun sales

So they profit from selling to criminals. They also profit from the fear that prompts citizens to feel the need to buy guns to protect themselves.

Gun evangelists who don't directly profit from gun sales but nonetheless advance the same positions as the gun lobby must be happy with the existing state of affairs or they wouldn't so vigorously fight to maintain them.

[cherokeeprogressive]

78. So, no? n/t

[friendly_iconoclast]

60. "That is why we have the highest homicide rate in the First World, and that is exactly how gun...

...evangelists want it."

Bullshit.

[hack89]

66. So cutting our murder rate in half over the past twenty years

means the gun lobby is not as powerful as you say? Because such a large drop is a massive fail if their stated goal is to keep our murder rate as high as possible.

[BainsBane]

73. that has to do with the percentage of young males in the population

As demographic factors have changed, crime has declined. We continue to have the highest homicide rate in the first world, with the exception of Russia (depending on how you want to categorize them).

[hack89]

74. So demographics overwhelmed the impact of more guns?

interesting.

Perhaps you are on to something - lets look at the demographics of those most likely to commit gun violence and tailor our solutions to address those specific groups.

As for our murder rate, you need to be patient. It took 20 years to cut it in half - in another 20 years it will be lower yet.

[branford]

52. The murder rate is still too high . .

and Chicago is an important city in the gun debate both because: (i) until recently, both the State of Illinois and City of Chicago had some of the most draconian gun laws in the country, and (ii) it is the hometown of our President, who spent many of his prior professional years as an elected representative in the state, both at the state and federal level.

[BainsBane]

70. It's too high in Detroit, Nola, DC, Baltimore

and every other city in the country as well.

[branford]

71. Despite declining crime rates, you and I are in rare agreement.

Chicago is nevertheless important politically for the reasons I cited.

I should have also included the fact the Rahm Emmanuel, the current mayor of Chi-town, was the President's first Chief of Staff.

For good or ill, anything that happens in Chicago has the potential for national news. Sadly, we also live in a time where the news relies on the old axiom, "if it bleeds, it leads."

[Jamaal510]

55. I'm surprised about

KC, Jax, and OKC being on this list. I hardly ever hear anything about those cities when it comes to crime and murder rates.

[BainsBane]

65. The media influence how we perceived which cities are most dangerous

and it's interesting how much they diverges from actual crime stats.

[nomorenomore08]

68. Where's Oakland on that list? Or did they exclude the western U.S.?

Because I lived in West Oakland from 2009-2012 and it's like the fucking Wild West out there. Hearing sirens and gunshots was so common that it became just part of the background noise.

[X_Digger]

69. This graphic used a table that used metropolitan statistical areas..

So hot spots got watered down by neighboring areas with less crime. That same year, using city data, here's the list:

LOUISIANA New Orleans 58
MICHIGAN Flint 51
MICHIGAN Detroit 48
MISSOURI St. Louis 35
NEW JERSEY Newark 34
MARYLAND Baltimore 31
MISSISSIPPI Jackson 30
LOUISIANA Baton Rouge 28
CALIFORNIA Oakland 26
CONNECTICUT New Haven 26

[nomorenomore08]

75. That's murders per 100,000 people, I'm assuming...

nt

[X_Digger]

76. Yup, sorry for not annotating a quick cut and paste. n/t

[Jenoch]

77. Where does Chicago rate in their total number of homicides?

Chicago is a large population center. They have a lot of homicides, but I don't know how the total number of homicides compares with other localities.