Poor People Murder

If you saw the title, you were probably either immediately interested in what I had to say or pissed off. Either way, it worked.

So...what do I mean that poor people murder? Am I saying that people who have more wealth do not commit murder? Well...no. But, sort of. Yesterday I posted that firearms make you safer. It's the argument that both 2nd Amendment supporters and opponents like to pick and pluck data and prove their points. The problem? They only pick and pluck data that proves their points. They fail to acknowledge that mass quantities of data that contradicts their view and helps their opponents.

After each side picks the data to prove their points, they go to media outlets that leans towards their views and spray streams of numbers and poll data that makes everyone on both sides satisfied that they  are truly correct.

At any rate...Now to poor people murdering. The next step to make some sense of this madness was to find out if there is something that more closely follows homicide rates. Of course my next question was how wealth affects homicide rates. All the data is the same data looked at yesterday, with per capita GDP (from CIA fact book) added to the mix. Again, countries that I do not have gun availability and homicide rates were thrown out. So...there are countries missing from the GDP data. If you care, then you go find the missing information and prove my trends wrong with some amazing find that will change the average of 152 countries. I'm lazy!

Not surprising, the poorer the country, the higher the homicide rates. More surprising, for countries with a GDP over $30k, the average homicide rate was 2.2 per 100,000 residents. Twenty-six countries on my list had over $30k. The average was skewed by the Bahamas. With a homicide rate of 21.6, 16.2 homicides per 100k ahead of US at 5.4, the average drops to 1.5 per 100k when Bahamas is dropped from the $30k+ upper class. Contrast this to the 'poor' countries with per capita GDP under $30k which average a 12.2 homicide per 100k. 

Here is the per capita GDP vs. homicide rate per 100k residents. 

The only other item I care to look at today is the gun ownership and how it varies with wealth. I'll make some assumptions that I do not think are too extreme. I'll go out on a limb with the tree goats and make a connection that gun ownership is roughly proportional to guns per 100 people. I'll also reach out for that delicious leaf and assume that as per capita GDP goes up, so does the average wealth of the countries residents.

What I found, is that guns are a luxury item. At least in the sense that the wealthier the country, the more guns per 100 persons there are. Again, using my logic from above, wealthy people like guns. Granted, there is noise in the charts as always, but the trends are there. 

Here is per Capita GDP vs. gun availability.

I did find it interesting that the US was 2nd highest out of the $30k GDP group. Going along with the poor people murder theory, I'm going to speculate that this could be due to the large quantity of urban inner-city homicides. I looked at a lot of data in the past on urban homicide when we were stuck living in the suburbs of the 3rd most dangerous metropolitan area in the US. Memphis if you did not know. At any rate, it showed that urban areas suck and are typically less safe than suburbs or rural communities. Shocking I know. Maybe I'll dig up the stats again and make some mesmerizing charts.

Last thought. If you want to improve your chances of NOT getting murdered, here is my advice. Try working harder, make more money and buy more guns. Oh...and I'd stay away from Honduras, Jamaica and Venezuela if I were you.