2017 Homicide Rates in Latin America and the Carribean • Hacker News Board

Re: 2017 Homicide Rates in Latin America and the Carribean

#71

Post by JPKab » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 11:37 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #56

lostlogin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an internal problem first and foremost and progress needs to be made at home first. There are models to follow. New Zealand had been making slow and steady progress righting colonial wrongs. There have been many missteps and failures but the overall direction is positive. Important differences though - systematic and large scale slavery didn’t happen and the time frame during which the damage was done was shorte…

My point primarily is that, the discussion about reparations, is almost universally isolated to how much the US Government should have to pay. It almost universally excludes the nations that dominated the slave trade, such as Britain. Various rich, powerful European nations benefited massively from the economic output of the vast slavery they initiated and maintained, while suffering essentially none of the consequen…

You didn't mention the African kings and chieftains who sold the captured members of rival tribes to the Europeans in exchange for guns and rum. The is a key link in the slave trade that is ignored in these discussions. If you think Europeans were walking into jungles and capturing slaves themselves, you are sorely misinformed.

Re: 2017 Homicide Rates in Latin America and the Carribean

#72

Post by IkmoIkmo » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:10 PM UTC

hackermailman wrote: post #49

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NY has restrictive gun-controls, is quite urban/dense and has the 2nd highest gdp/capita by state. They're all correlated with lower murder rates, that helps explain things a bit on NY. The one thing NY does have is high inequality measured in gini, the highest of all states. That usually drives crime/murder rates. But it's probably because of rich outliers (extreme upper capital class), rather than a big gap between…

Canada has far more restrictive gun control than NY, yet we are already on track to beat NY state in shootings this year with some cities having a 94% increase in violent gang offenses involving illegal handguns according to StatsCan. The difference must be policing and whatever gang strategy NY state has developed to get kids not to join them.

Could you reference me? Canada's murder rate is about 1/2 of the NY rate, and about 1/3rd of the US rate, and is about half of its peak 40 years ago. Canada has roughly the same amount of murders as NYS but the latter has 54% (let's say half) the population.

It's true that the rates are rising for a few years in a row, but this is nothing new. If anything, Canada's typical pattern is to see a rise a few years in a row, followed by a stronger drop. [0]

It's also true that gang related offences were part of the recent rise. But let's also note that they entail about 100 of the 600 murders in Canada, 15.5% in the last year for which I can find data. (2016). The vast majority of murders are done not by strangers but by friends or family, not related to gang violence.

[0] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/171122/cg-b001-eng....

Re: 2017 Homicide Rates in Latin America and the Carribean

#73

Post by IkmoIkmo » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #65

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NY has restrictive gun-controls, is quite urban/dense and has the 2nd highest gdp/capita by state. They're all correlated with lower murder rates, that helps explain things a bit on NY. The one thing NY does have is high inequality measured in gini, the highest of all states. That usually drives crime/murder rates. But it's probably because of rich outliers (extreme upper capital class), rather than a big gap between…

Doesn't Venezuela have strict gun laws as well. I don't think private gun ownership is even allowed. So how effective is that alone? It seems per capita income would be the prevalent factor.

> So how effective is that alone? It seems per capita income would be the prevalent factor.

It isn't, alone, in a cherry-picked example. But ceteris paribus it's a explanatory factor.

I mean, one could also use your argument the other way around and question whether income is effective as a factor by itself. Cherry pick some country with similar levels of median wealth and a wildly different murder rate and gun laws. Like say the Netherlands and the US. Doesn't really prove a point, it'd be silly to now claim income isn't an important factor.