
Murders in US very concentrated (2017) - ComputerGuru
https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/number-murders-county-54-us-counties-2014-zero-murders-69-1-murder/
======
tlb
When you slice it even finer you find that 99.95% of people were murdered zero
times, while 0.05% of people suffered 100% of the murders.

They try to make it sound like a statistic about geographical crime
distribution, but it's mostly a statistic about sizes of counties.

~~~
docdeek
FTA: In 2014, the most recent year that a county level breakdown is available,
54% of counties (with 11% of the population) have no murders. 69% of counties
have no more than one murder, and about 20% of the population. These counties
account for only 4% of all murders in the country. The worst 1% of counties
have 19% of the population and 37% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties
contain 47% of the population and account for 68% of murders.

~~~
mjevans
When you break it down that way it's a less strong correlation, but tends to
support a model based on 'network effects' (opportunity) and/or social
pressures (density).

It would be really interesting to slice things and compare relative rates for
neighborhood level housing density, poverty/affluence, and education.

As a potential control study though, I'd like to propose focusing on quality
of housing and 'tranquility' factors. How well does that housing prevent
problematic interaction? (Noisy / smelly (air pollution of various kinds) /
resource conflicts) My hypothesis is that higher quality housing and housing
codes can contribute to decreasing stress. The need to build more housing to
fulfill the more lofty living requirements would also have a positive effect
on the affordability of housing (and naturally for the experiment would need
to be targeted across all levels of need). Of course to eliminate the effect
of housing merely being new at least some units would have to be new but built
to the existing standard's minimums rather than the study's re-defined
minimums.

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ronreiter
This is almost meaningless in terms of statistics. It's like saying that
99.99% of the schools had zero murders in them.

~~~
swarnie_
That number seems a little high for USA schools. 95% maybe.

~~~
briandear
So almost 7000 murders IN SCHOOLS?

That’s a ridiculous statement.

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verylittlemeat
The man behind this "research center" is John Lott.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott)

Feel free to skip to the hefty controversy section.

~~~
golergka
Ad hominem much?

~~~
verylittlemeat
I have no problem calling out a guy whose pattern of behavior includes
twisting data to come to false conclusions, losing data related to
controversial studies and pretending to be other people to make his studies
look better.

If that's ad hominem I'm 100% ok with that.

~~~
threatofrain
Yes, it is ad hominem, in the same way it's ad hominem when you are positively
prejudiced towards the medical opinions of doctors, or how may be bigoted and
discriminatory towards the medical opinions on Yahoo answers.

One-line arguments about ad hominem, bandwagon, or appeal to authority, are
all lazy arguments.

~~~
verylittlemeat
Most people are positively prejudiced towards their doctors because they're
trained for 8 years to deal with medical issues. I'm positively prejudiced to
the advice of my tax lawyer because he has spent 30 years working with tax
forms. Doctors and lawyers make mistakes and give ignorant advice. Just
because sometimes I find better information on google than through a doctor
doesn't mean the entire professional system is bullshit.

edit: In fact this exact conversation is an interesting example. John Lott is
a highly decorated academic and has received praise from notable academics. In
this case I used google to discover his history of deception. So in a way I'm
using "yahoo answers" to argue against the phd. With John Lott the criticism
is coming from enough sources I feel confident trusting they're true.

~~~
stmfreak
Black Mirror did an episode on the consequences of voting for truth. Or was
that The Orville? In any case, Lott is using data to support the unpopular
side of the gun control debate. It is not surprising to find a gazillion hit
pieces undermining his character and credentials. None of which erodes his
data.

His research was one of the reasons I moved my family to the suburbs where
violent crimes are excessively rare and committed predominantly by visitors
from the urban centers.

~~~
verylittlemeat
The gun control debate and politics in general don't really mean much to me.
What I'm concerned about is Lott's deceptive use of statistics to come to
questionable conclusions.

If you read his entire wiki there are just a stunning number of red flags (the
whole thing even, not just the controversies section). In this HN thread alone
people have casually pointed out some obvious flaws. At the very least he's
putting a lot of effort into spreading FUD about violent crime.

I really don't see how you can take him as a useful and objective source on
these issues unless you're already coming to the conversation with some kind
of anti-urban prejudice.

In some ways it reminds me of the conversation about child rapists and
pedophiles. People lose their mind over the safety of their children when
exposed to the community while ignoring that most of these crimes happen
within their own families. It all just smells of a general fear of the vague
and dangerous "other."

~~~
classicsnoot
Do you live in a high crime area? Your argument stinks of many degrees of
separation between what you speak of and what you know.

------
seanhandley
Location of murders isn't indicative of much beyond "lots of people tend to be
here most of the time".

So what if more people own guns in the suburbs? They can take them outside of
the area to shoot people. It doesn't mean "owning guns is safe".

~~~
colek42
Owning guns is not inherently unsafe. The rate of incident is per gun is very
low.

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JohnGB
In other news, about 2% of the US counties have about 51% of the population.

The problem isn't the distribution, it's the rate of murders when compared
with other industrialised states.

~~~
evmar
Relevant xkcd making this point:

[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

------
mhuffman
It seems like this is geared toward an argument that gun laws should be
locally based and not federally managed.

From that perspective, it does make the point visually. There is a argument to
be made that a small county in Nebraska probably should not have the same gun
restrictions as in Los Angeles County.

I am not sure that I totally agree because of how easy it is to transport
guns, but it is probably worth discussion.

~~~
GCU-Empiricist
It's interesting that in my various travels California was the only state
where (at the time) as a military service member, occasional pistol
instructor, and qualifying officer for use of deadly force; I did not find it
(edit:relatively) trivial to obtain a concealed carry permit, and professional
friends told me it might be safer to leave my firearms collection in storage
in another state, (I did). In fact it was the one place where the common
knowledge confirmed by my experience was I'd have to be law enforcement, or a
professional bodyguard, instead of a service-member to get one.

Edit: Trivial here being fingerprints, background check, lots of paperwork,
show proof of safety training or spend a a good part of the weekend and ~$100
total on paperwork training ect.

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alphabettsy
The article seems to be trying to make some point about gun ownership, and
it’s leaves out a significant issue we have with guns. It does not address
accidental shooting injuries or suicides, it also does not address shootings
where there is no death, but maybe that’s outside the scope of the article
since it’s focused on murder.

------
solarkraft
> Despite lower gun ownership, urban areas experience much higher murder
> rates.

A gun advocate may say the rates are lower _because_ more people own guns.
Probably false, but the whole article seems quite flawed.

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sharpercoder
Recently I watched Louis Theroux' documentaries about violence in the US. It
was mentioned that certain areas (in particular Milwaukee) shooting spiked
right after the gun laws loosened.

~~~
ComputerGuru
On the other hand, for the longest time both DC and Chicago virtually banned
guns and yet had atrocious violent crime rates.

~~~
tolien
There’s an abundance of evidence (e.g. [1]) that nearby states with more lax
controls produce a flow of black market guns toward states with tighter
controls, and that with increased legal availability the price of a black
market gun declines[2].

1: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/12/us/gun-
traffi...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/12/us/gun-traffickers-
smuggling-state-gun-laws.html)

2: [http://www.ibtimes.com.au/cost-illegal-firearms-australia-
ha...](http://www.ibtimes.com.au/cost-illegal-firearms-australia-has-
skyrocketed-criminals-now-do-gun-sharing-1378871)

~~~
ComputerGuru
I like that it’s a very convenient argument that rationally culminates with
“so the only way it can work is for everyone to ban guns everywhere.”

~~~
tolien
Not necessarily. It only leads there if the flow has to be zero - reducing the
flow and/or making black market guns more expensive than alternatives would
still be worth doing (it would have a significant effect on armed crime long
before the number of available black market guns reached zero), and could be
achieved through some degree of owner responsibility (e.g. requiring guns be
in a safe, have trigger locks, be kept separately from ammunition, limit the
volume of ammunition stored at home). Better still, that doesn’t even have to
require legislation!

Some of those steps would also most likely reduce the number of unpremeditated
killings, e.g the freak accidents where babies shoot parents with the gun in
their mother’s bag, kids shoot each other with a gun taken from a nightstand
etc.

Of course, the usual response to this is some variation on a theme of the fear
of crime, to which the only response is that violent crime has been declining
for years and the people making most noise about it are frequently invested in
the weapons industry.

~~~
stmfreak
I don't have a problem with Chicago enacting gun free zones and stopping all
people and vehicles entering the city for cavity searches to stop the flow of
weapons. I think it would be an illuminating experiment.

~~~
tolien
I suspect people might still find a way to smuggle things through the
roadblocks but they could always build a wall.

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lholden
Open page... start reading. Popup takes over page. Close page.

I'm sure the content is interesting... but throwing intrusive popups in my
face is a quick way to get me off ones site.

~~~
thesmallestcat
uMatrix is your friend.

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limaoscarjuliet
Let me guess: 80% of murders happens in 20% of counties? Or make it 90-10.

~~~
mjevans
As others in this discussion have pointed out the sensationalist (and
technically correct but meaningless) headline isn't based on data corrected
for the distribution of population.

Another reply elsewhere did point out that even corrected as such there was
still an elevated chance (but not anywhere near as sensational of one) with
denser areas of the population.

------
purplezooey
The problem here is that everything is balkanized now in the US. Nobody wants
a strong federal government but more central control means enforcing a minimum
standard, which we clearly do not have.

