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Comment by telesilla | Hacker News Reader

My friends are thinkers and challengers of the system: it's for them I am more worried, that they can't speak freely. I could move to Condesa and live a protected life, but that's just colonialism (using my spending power to put a cocoon around me with Uber and private parties). That's not the México I'm interested in. I've also been mugged rather violently there anyway on Calle Amsterdam, (though no worse than Barcelona for example, being in the wrong place or time) and I've had Mexican friends sitting in traffic going to work, having a gun pulled on them for their wallet.

I'm not really sure how safe Mexico City really is, once you get out of the ex-pat bubble.

View on HN

My very limited experience with Mexico City is that I'd treat it like many U.S. cities: it's fine, if you know which areas to avoid after dark, and which areas to avoid entirely. It is not like a safe European city center where you can go almost anywhere alone on foot at any time of day. But most U.S. cities don't fit that description either. And it's not at the other extreme that some people imagine, some kind of Somalia-esque set of private compounds separated by lawless warzones.

Well, there is a huge difference between Europe and the US/Mexico: most people don't have guns. You will rarely see anybody with a weapon here. If you get attacked, it will be with fists, sometime a knife. Having the possibility that somebody pulls a gun on you is crazy to me, like something that should only happen in a movie.

Mexican gun control laws are far stricter than anything in Europe. You can get years in prison for even a single unauthorized bullet.

Mexico is a case study of how gun control can lead to an increase in danger for the population. Gun control can be nice in "civilized" places, but in Mexico, even the police are on the take. Justice in Mexico consists of avoiding the "Justice System" at all costs.

I lived a year in Chapala and even there we had cartel shootouts where police were among the bad guys. If you are a potential victim of violence, the police are the last people you'd usually call. It's often every man for himself -- so that results in nearly every house having high walls, razor wire fences, bars on every window, "alarm dogs" on rooftops.

My wife if from Guadalajara and we spend a lot of time there but it isn't Texas. In Texas, a home invasion is often met by a bullet from the homeowner, in Mexico you just better hope your wall is harder to climb than your neighbor's.

That being said, Mexico IS a great place -- but it's great because of the culture and people -- the government on the other hand, is a disgrace. The odds of it every changing are slim to none because part of Hispanic culture is a sense of fatalism and "it's God's will" kind of thinking. Mexican Catholism bears a huge blame -- there's a conditioned helplessness. Not to mention the cartels are among the Church's biggest benefactors! This isn't the thinking necessarily among the more cosmopolitan Mexicans, but that represents a minuscule minority. However, even among the educated, there a overriding sense of pessimism -- starting a business in Mexico is quixotic -- as soon as you get some income, everyone starts chipping away at it trying to get their share.

> the cartels are among the Church's biggest benefactors

i'd like to hear more about this. this story does not receive a lot of coverage in the US.

I can't speak on the relationship between the Church and the cartels specifically, but many of the wealthiest narcos are significant social benefactors in their home regions. It's a brilliant strategy - it legitimizes their organization in the eyes of the citizenry, by addressing real needs that the state has failed to fulfill, and in so doing simultaneously delegitimizes the state.

For example in Sinaloa, El Chapo's home state, he's regarded by many as a "Robin Hood" figure because he's built schools, churches, hospitals and more in impoverished mountain villages that receive little to no aid from the state. In return, he was for years able to move freely and conduct his business with impunity from Sinaloa, without having to worry about locals betraying him.

Living in the Netherlands, I know that people with bad intentions most likely have guns. Even in my small hometown, a citizen that owned a spy equipment store got shot up in daylight in front of his home. Other example would be people getting robbed in their house with guns (not daily, but it happens). There are plenty of other examples... I cannot say I feel 100% save most of the time.

It might not make you feel better, but Holland's gun death per 100,000 is in the 0.5's compared to the U.S.'s 10's and Mexico's 10's.

You're 20 times more likely to get killed by a gun in the US or Mexico.

Note that in the whole of Holland there are 50 gun homicides per year, so you were actually pretty unlucky to experience that. Your experience is exceptional and not a common occurrence, especially as I assume most Holland murders are not widely reported spouse killings, etc.

Mexico had 18,398 gun homicides in 2011, for comparison, Holland, 60, US, 11,068.

The gun homicide rate in the US is 4.5.

The US has roughly 110 guns per 100,000 people and 4.5 gun homicides per 100,000 people.

Mexico has over 20 gun homicides per 100,000 people and about 18 guns per 100,000 people.

Canada has 2 gun murders per 100,000 people and 31 guns per 100,000 people.

Mexico: each gun is responsible for 1.11 murders

US: each gun is responsible for .04 murders

Canada: each gun is responsible for .07 murders.

Interestingly, the Bahamas has 30 gun murders per 100,000 and about 4 guns per 100,000. That's 7.5 murders per gun.

France has 2.8 gun murders per 100k and 31 guns per 100,000. Which makes each gun responsible for .09 murders -- slightly higher than both the US and Canada, despite far stricter laws.

The U.K. Has .23 gun murders and 6.6 guns -- so .35 murders per gun.

Sweden has 1.47 murders per 100k with 31.6 guns for a rate of .047 murders per gun.

Nicaragua has 4.68 murders with 7.7 guns -- each gun is part of 1.65 murders.

Jamaica: 31 murders/8 guns.

Denmark: 1.28/12 guns

Israel: 2.09/7.3 guns

Brazil: 21.2/8 guns

Australia: .93/21.7 guns

My point: gun ownership does not correlate to gun murder rates -- in fact one could make a case that increased gun ownership could actually reduce gun murder rates.

Despite having more guns per capita than most countries, the overall US murder rate ranks 108 out of 218, with Honduras topping the list (incidentally Honduras has 67 murders and 6.2 guns per 100,000)

I think you're making the argument that with more guns, countries tend to have fewer gun deaths per gun. This makes sense, casually. However, I doubt that anyone cares about the number of gun murders per gun, but rather the total number of gun murders, which is (please correct me if wrong) still correlated with more guns.

Also, I see that you've focused the discussion on gun murders, which is fine, but we should note that decreased gun ownership does lead to far fewer gun deaths, mostly by reducing suicides.

Does it matter what weapon the murder/suicide was committed with?

Yes, fewer guns mean fewer gun deaths -- but does it mean fewer deaths in general?

If fewer people own Honda Civics, then fewer people will die in Honda Civic accidents. But that dip in Honda Civic deaths would likely be absorbed into deaths by all other car models, such that the overall death rate remains the same.

Overall suicides significantly reduce as suicide is easier to do on impulse with a gun.

Depends on the culture; Japan has high suicide rates but low gun ownership.

Not if it's easier (psychologically, practically, whatever) to kill someone with a Honda Civic than other cars, of course.

Suicide is one of those clubs where we, as a society, probably have an ethical compulsion to increase the barrier to entry.

The statistic to highlight in this debate is the number of gun-related deaths per gun owner, not per gun.

> The US has roughly 110 guns per 100,000 people

What is this based on, or what am I missing? From what I've repeatedly read before, it's more like 110 guns per 100 people.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/19/us-gun-owner... agrees with you.

Around 265 million guns ("more than one gun for every American adult") and an estimate of 55 million gun owners in the US. Interestingly, some 7.7m gun owners make up for half of all guns.

Guns are mostly concentrated in Southern/Midwest states. Most people do not own guns in the North and coastal states. Besides people living in the sticks, I don't even know anyone who owns a gun in the New York State city I live. I'm 36 and I've never shot a gun before! http://reverbpress.com/politics/firearms-per-capita-by-state...

Guns are a solution in the right hands, that's what the founders believed, and if these stats are correct it proves that they can be used responsibly if society is stable enough. I think we're approaching a time though when guns will be a net negative, but by then, the USA will cease to exist as we know it today.

History has way more moments where guns were used for terrible things that good things.

10 is the death rate, 5 the homicide.

All you've done is the old trick of twisting data until it supports what you desperately want to be true because you like owning a gun. Remember, there are far more ways that the data shows you're wrong than support you.

Like climate change deniers, the only scientists that support lesser gun laws are the ones that the NRA pay for. Your congress even defunded independent research as the "wrong" result for the lobbyists kept coming out, more gun control, much less death.

(Total number of guns / total number of gun owners) is missing in this conversation. Many single gun owners skew the total number of guns.

> You're 20 times more likely to get killed by a gun in the US

This is very misleading because this audience is primarily middle class/rich white/asians employed in the tech industry.

There are 2 primary factors in homicide rates. Be poor or be a certain race. If you are not either of those things, your chances of being murdered in the US is very low.

*edit 3 factors -- men. Women don't get murdered often.

How is it misleading? Are all Holland's gun killings well-heeled white techies? Why wouldn't those same factors apply in Holland? I haven't looked at stats but I'd take an educated guess that the economic/ethnic divides also apply in Holland.

You've also made the same mistake as another commentator (I admit I wasn't clear), my first figures are total gun deaths, including self-harm. A significant percentage of those deaths are white men killing themselves with guns. As I understand it, a figure that only partially translates into other forms of suicides in countries or states with better gun control (basically, less guns = less suicides, other methods need more preparation and so are caught in time or fail). A brief google seems to support that:

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/

Proportionally speaking, the factors probably hold, the cold, hard, truth is that as a white techie you're still much more likely to die by a gun in America or Mexico than in Holland.

Your own state department warns about Mexico:

U.S. citizens have been the victims of violent crimes, including homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery in various Mexican states

You can search for US citizen deaths in foreign countries:

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/statistics/deaths...

I see 75 homicides of US citizens in Mexico last year. It doesn't list guns or not guns.

I tried Holland, the UK, Germany, Spain no homicides of US citizens. 2 people killed in Italy, 3 in France (Nice terrorist attack).

There are 4 factors.. emergency services and doctors. Fast responders, can save a gunshot victim from becoming a thread to officials via statistics, and allow him to have a happy vegetative state existence ever after.

Same thing applies Mexico -- if you're not involved in the drug trade or law enforcement, your odds of getting killed are almost nil. Mexico welcomes over 20M tourists a year from all over and almost all make it back home safely.

Also, if I remember the stats correctly, you are more likely to kill yourself with a gun than to be murdered by one in the US.

I have to say, you are really over exaggerating. Gun violence is just not a reality you have to be worried about here. Amsterdam is nothing like any US city where I've lived(in terms of violence on a daily basis), and The Netherlands as a whole is extremely safe.

As another resident of Amsterdam. I don't think your impression of the situation really matches up with statistics. Look at these two articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... http://projects.oregonlive.com/ucc-shooting/gun-deaths

Here you can see the gun death rate in The Netherlands per 100k inhabitants is 0.58, but there's some areas in the US where the rate is quite comparable.

What really sets things apart is the suicide rate, most deaths by guns in the US are by suicide, but there's counties in the US where there's easy access to guns and the overall death rate is lower than the Dutch gun violence + non-gun suicides.

So in a lot of cases it's not that just having guns makes everything hyper-violent. It's just that if people feel like killing themselves they'll use the best available instrument available to them.

Conflating that with general gun safety as it pertains to you feeling safe walking around Amsterdam, but not in a comparable town in the US, is silly.

I'm sorry, but the lowest group for that US graphic you linked is higher than the number of the Netherlands (0.58 gun deaths, 0.29 of which are homicides, both per 100k). The lowest groups are 2-7 and 0.5-1.4, respectively, both of which are significantly higher than the value for the Netherlands. In fact, your link shows the exact opposite of what you claim: there isn't a single county in the US that has lower gun death or gun homicide ratio than the entirety of the Netherlands. That's an exaggeration, too (there isn't data for all counties), but it doesn't diminish the point that you're by far less likely to get shot in the Netherlands than in a comparable US city.

You're misreading the graph[1]. The 2-7 grouping is all gun deaths, homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths.

If you hover over individual blue counties you can see the breakdown by homicide and suicide rate for some of them.

E.g. Washington, NY has a gun homicide rate of 0.46, gun suicide rate of 5.14. Meanwhile The Netherlands has a gun homicide rate of 0.29, gun suicide rate of 0.28, but an overall homicide rate of 0.7[2], and an overall suicide rate of 8.2, while the US has a suicide rate of 12.1.

Does The Netherlands still come out better? Am I cherry-picking by comparing county-level statistics v.s. entire countries? Yes and yes.

But for the point I'm making it doesn't matter. The point is that there's a common misunderstanding, particularly among mainland Europeans, that the mere availability of guns in the US results in a drastic increase in the homicide rate.

This is simply not supported by the data. What the data does show is that if you're going to kill yourself or others you're likely to use the best tool for the task, whether that's a gun or a knife.

Does the ease of availability of guns in the US make it easier to kill people, and cause some murders that otherwise wouldn't have happened? Yeah, but it's hard to tease that out of the data, it also prevents some murders.

What we do see from the data[2] is that there's lots of countries with much more restrictive gun policies that have higher homicide rates than the US, and furthermore the occurrences of gun-related homicides in the US don't at all map to whether the area has more liberal access to guns, but whether there's a general crime & poverty problem there.

Lithuania has a significantly higher homicide rate than the US, 5.5 v.s. the US's 3.9, but just 1% of homicides there are gun crimes[3].

However I've never heard anyone say to my Lithuanian friends that they were lucky to get out because of the obscene murder rate there, but I've heard my fellow Europeans make comments like that to some of my American friends when it comes to gun crimes.

1. http://projects.oregonlive.com/ucc-shooting/gun-deaths

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

3. https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/citation/quotes/10319

Pretty sure I'm not. The 0.58/100k figure for the Netherlands includes all gun deaths, too. Washington, NY, has a population of <64k people. Yet its gun homicide rate is still 58% higher than that of the Netherlands. And that's for a county that you picked to show that the situation in the US supposedly isn't as bad as I think.

The fact remains that the US have a gun homicide rate of 3.43/100k, compared to the Netherlands' 0.29/100k (12x), Germany's 0.07/100k (49x), France's 0.21/100k (16x), the UK's 0.06/100k (57x), or Spain's 0.15/100k (23x). That's an order of magnitude difference for all of these countries, with two major EU nations (they haven't left yet! :P) at about 50x fewer gun homicides than the US! Only three EU countries—Italy, Portugal, and Greece—have less than 10x fewer gun homicides, at 0.35, 0.42, and 0.53 per 100k, respectively, or in relative terms: 9.8x, 8x, 6.5x fewer. How is that not a "drastic increase"?

The gun homicide rate in Europe is drastically lower than in the US. That's non-debatable, the data shows it beyond any doubt. So is total homicide rate, albeit by a smaller margin, as per your link, with the US at 3.9, two to four times higher than most EU countries. Singling out Lithuania is misleading.

I'm not going to go into whether access to guns increases suicide rates due to opportunity, that's another discussion. Let's stick with the homicides here.

The "glad you got out of that hellhole" comments you note could be due to movies and TV shows. There is a lot of gun violence in US productions, it's not hard to see how that could create an association for people who haven't lived there.

This reply is correctly refuting an argument that I'm not making. If I was saying that the gun homicide rate anywhere in the EU & the US was comparable I'd be wrong, as you say it's off by orders of magnitude.

What I am saying is that comparing homicides by weapon type ignores the big picture, which is who cares in the end whether you're killed by a gun, a knife, or bludgeoned to death? You're going to be just as dead.

The availability of guns in the US means that when there's a homicide or a suicide it's vastly more likely to involve a gun than in the EU, but people focus on that statistic and assume that magically taking away the guns would drastically improve the situation.

That's not supported by the data. The people of Lithuania, which for some in the US would match some ideal they have of restrictive gun laws, manage to kill each other at a higher overall rate than pepole in the US, even though they have gun restrictions to the point where only 1% of those homicides involve a gun.

So yes, if you look at the US by firearm related death rate[1] alone it looks like a 3rd world hellhole. But comparing countries by death rate by specific implement makes no sense. Instead you have to look at the overall homicide rate[2] and the overall suicide rate[3].

Once you do that, several countries in Europe look worse when it comes to homicides, and the US is exceeded by the likes of France when it comes to overall suicide rates.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

Again you single out Lithuania, completely ignoring that most European countries have a homicide rate that is 2–4x lower than that in the US. Let's just check a few: France 1.2, Germany 0.9, UK 0.9, Italy 0.8, Spain 0.7, Poland 0.7, Austria 0.5, Switzerland 0.5, Netherlands 0.7, Belgium 1.8, United States 3.9.

How do you look at this data and conclude "yup, the EU is just as bad as the US"? Instead you focus on the Baltic states and the Balkans, which is not what people commonly have in mind when you refer to Europe.

And no, we're still not talking about suicides. They are completely orthogonal to homicides. Stop injecting them into the discussion.

I'm not concluding that "the EU is just as bad as the US", and really, I can't see how you could possibly come to that conclusion after reading my comments.

Yes, on average pretty much any part of the EU is better when it comes to homicide statistics. All I've been pointing out that from looking at the homicide & gun death statistics in the US you can't conclude that guns are important variable driving those statistics.

    > we're [..] not talking about suicides [...]
    > Stop injecting them into the discussion.

You're the one who started injecting suicides into the discussion. In your earlier comment[1] you said, in response to a graph[2] I posted that included non-suicide numbers, which is the part I was citing, that the "lowest groups are 2-7". Those numbers include gun suicides, whereas I wasn't talking about that at all but the other data on the page which shows gun homicide statistics similar to the Dutch 0.58.

But since you muddied the water by bringing up these unrelated suicide numbers, I started to itemize the suicide & the non-suicide you were conflating them with, and now a few comments later you're complaining about my discussing something you brought up in the first place.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14034308

2. http://projects.oregonlive.com/ucc-shooting/gun-deaths

Man, I have to ask if you even read past the first sentence of my comment... Yes, I'm sure that the homicide rate of Rotterdam may be higher than some podunk midwestern town. What I said though, is that I feel safer living in Amsterdam over some of the US cities where I have also lived. Your statistics show that ALL of these cities(DC, Philly, NYC, SF, and LA) are objectively more dangerous to live in than Amsterdam. I'm sure you are trying to dispel something you see as a common myth, but maybe you should try having a conversation instead of giving a sermon.

People with bad intentions most likely don't have guns in the UK. Some people with bad intentions will, but they're the people who're risking everything in the first place, not the people who'll get a couple of years if they're caught.

If you have a gun you are not safer. It leads to escalation and more people die. We are not at war, guns are not the solution.

You are less likely to attack someone if there is the risk that person has a gun. Just like you are less likely to speed in your car if there's a cop driving next to you.

> You are less likely to attack someone if there is the risk that person has a gun.

I don't believe that. I think that the calculus of whether to attack someone skips the "is the victim armed?" question. You just make sure to bring overwhelming force, e.g. bring a gun to a (probable) gun fight or a knife to a fist fight.

But what do I know. I'm just an European wuss, who has fire a handgun exactly once.

My wife was attacked and she was caring a gun. People who attack people are fundamentally not good at risk reward cost benefit analysis.

The deal is if you carry, which I did for years, you have to maintain above normal situational awareness. You have to be able to get space. Cops can do this because they arrive after the fact and get to enter the situation with the appropriate threat posture. If I have a gun and I get into an altercation the moment i'm in physical contact with the other person the gun doesn't matter. The long and the short of it is if you can be prepared and have "the drop" on someone a gun is a great way to protect yourself. That is why I feel the shotgun at home is a good idea concealed carry an overall liability.

Source. I lived in the 14th most dangerous neighborhood in the us for 15 years and carried a gun most of the time.

This presumes criminals think this through. Largely criminals exist because they didn't or couldn't think it through. If they must have money to feed their child or their addiction they will attempt to mug someone, they might pick the lowest risk target or the first target. Let's not presume these people have lots of options, if that were true most wouldn't be criminals.

that sounds like an interesting story - more info on the spy equipment store owner who was gunned down please.

mayhaps it was a husband who was caught doing bad things by his wife, due to the spy equipment the guy sold to his wife?

Can't be that many spy shop related assassinations in NL, so probably this guy, Ronald Bakker.

http://nltimes.nl/2015/09/10/police-huizen-murder-gangland-a...

A search on his name brings up Dutch results that badly Google translate into English, but it seems (from what I can decipher from a translation) police suspect he may have been shot after being suspected of passing on info related to another criminal investigation.

I think I am going to start investing in "Spy Shop Related Assassinations" - just because I like the way that phrase sounds...

> I cannot say I feel 100% save most of the time.

You can never be 100% safe. That's impossible.

You can never be 100% safe, but you can feel 100% safe since feelings are subjective.

You would be surprised, how many guns are there in Europe[1]. However, if you carry gun, it must be hidden, otherwise you could lose your permit.

Breaking law with legally held weapon is a rare thing (who would like lo lose it, right?). If someone breaks law with the gun, it will be illegal one.

[1] Except Britain. They can legally have only long guns, without cartridges. Basically only for hunting.

Yes, British firearms law changed after the Dunblane massacre [1] to outlaw handguns. The Hungerford massacre [2] in the 80s caused the outlawing of semi-automatics. I live in rural England, and many friends and neighbours have shotguns and hunting rifles. I was surprised to discover that a couple of the rifle owners use silencers too. Silencers do have a legitimate application; they confuse the directional hearing of the prey, so a hunter can get off a second or third shot at deer before they start running.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre

Silencers also mitigate hearing loss & noise pollution.

It seems that for the first time in generations, the US is looking at loosening restrictions on guns. There has even been a law introduced to remove silencers from the NFA, which would cause them to be treated much like guns in and of themselves as opposed to how they are treated now.

Everyone and their mums has a rifle.

Most people who are into doing criminal things actually have guns here in Europe. Our open borders allow people to drive a trunk full of guns from Turkish border directly to Berlin, and they regularly catch guys doing that.

Only the people who get attacked don't have any guns, and they get fucked up.

> Most people who are into doing criminal things actually have guns here in Europe.

Speaking for the western part: no they don't. No even close to the majority of criminals have guns (I don't dispute that they have easy access, though). You'll be hard pressed to find street robberies at gun point in Germany, France and the northern countries.

You'll be hard pressed to find street robberies at gun point in Eastern Europe too. Subjectively, it is much safer to walk on the streets of Warsaw, than Berlin.

Been in Warsaw one night, live in German city; can confirm.

Oh shut up. I live in Cologne, there are gang/biker shootings and robberies with guns every week. Police is always too late.

My brother live in frankfurt and even in the worst part in the city, with people injecting heroin in the street, you never get even bothered by anybody.

In France you hear about guns, but I lived in 8 different cities there, and I never been near any gun attack. None of my friends or relatives either.

If you have gun here, people look at you in a strange way.

Everytime me or my bro got in trouble, it was fist fighting. I got a knife once. Some of my friends got messed up. Fist again. In france, the UK, germany, Italy and spain.

I don't say there are no guns. I'm saying that it's not even of the same scale of occurrences than in the US.

Do you have anything to back that up or are you just gonna keep talking?

> Only the people who get attacked don't have any guns, and > they get fucked up.

If you fail to take regular firearm training, combat training or to acquire the necessary mindset for a gunfight under live threat, then you are even more fucked if you try to use that gun you are carrying to make you feel safer...

As a European that sounds terrible! That it is not as bad as a lawless warzone in a failed African state isn't much consolation??

I remember reading some anecdote from an Iraqi at the peak of the war. They talked about how most of the time you're totally safe, but every once in a while a bomb will go off and a bunch of people will die.

There's a spectrum of danger that a lot of us have had the privilege to not experience. I could imagine getting mugged in some places in Europe, but not really imagine dying in the "mugging gone wrong => someone is dead" scenario you hear about in the US.

And of course the idea that I might get killed in a traffic stop is something I have the privilege to not experience.

The majority of the US has a murder rate comparable to Canada. The US has particularly extremely tilted murder rates based on location. Relatively small areas with hyper murder rates very substantially skew the numbers. A couple dozen neighborhoods in Chicago for example combine to account for about 2% of all murders in the US (with murder rates 50 to 100 times the national average).

A minimum of 95% of the US population live in areas with murder rates comparable to Canada (around 1.5 to 2 per 100,000 depending on the year). More than 200 million Americans live in areas with murder rates under 2. That's not impressive compared to the nicest parts of Europe, but it is very impressive compared to Latin America and Europe's largest country, Russia.

> but it is very impressive compared to Latin America and Europe's largest country, Russia.

"Better than Russia!" isn't much to brag about when it comes to social niceties. Given that the US starts out at half Russia's homicide rate even before you filter out anything, it seems like you're intentionally selecting a very bad comparator to make it look good.

And given that 17 of the top 20 homicide-rate countries are in Latin America, that's an even worse comparator. Indeed, the top 4 countries that are around double #5 and below, they're all in Latin America. You couldn't ask for a worse comparator - being better than the most extreme outliers isn't "very impressive" in the slightest.

Likewise, if you're pulling the trick of "oh, don't include the bits where the crime really happens", you need to do the same to the other countries you're comparing against. They have crime centers as well, and it's not an apples-to-apples comparison if you don't treat them similarly.

what's the murder rate measured on? Chicago is already almost 1% of the population, so I don't see how the murder rate per capita is 50 or 100 times the national average.

Also "200 million Americans don't even live in areas with bad stats" is another way of saying "100 million Americans live in areas with high murder rates"... seems like a larger issue than you're implying

Some neighborhoods != All of Chicago

right, I get that. But is it like.. 10% of Chicago? 1%?

If it's 20% of Chicago but has 50-100x the national per capita average, that's pretty crazy. If it's one house where everyone in the house was murdered (1 murder per capita!), well it's not really representative of much.

Eh, if you're not black and also not acting in a threatening or irrational manner, in the US, you're pretty safe.

Now, if you're either of those, much less both...

More dead whites than blacks. Individuals don't care about per capita statistics when they lay dying in the street.

More dead black people by cop guns, that's for damn sure.

Actually, no. People just don't care when white trailer trash get gunned down.

Several continents have failed states: South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

What failed state is there in Europe?

...and there's really not much comparison between a failed state in e.g. Europe vs Africa.

If you want to see truly safe cities, even by EU standards, check out Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, or Doha.

With the exception of Hong Kong, aren't these all pretty authoritarian states?

I'm not sure about Singapore, but Doha and Dubai are the both capital cities of a monarchy: Qatar and UAE, respectively. Keep that in mind if you ever visit.

I lived in the UAE for ~14 years, so I can give you some idea of how safe Dubai is.

- You can leave your car in a parking lot for hours, unlocked, with expensive devices clearly visible. Nobody would even come close to it.

- There is no need to lock your house when you leave. People usually do though, because it just make sense to do so.

- You can walk virtually anywhere in Dubai at any time of night, completely alone. Nobody will bother you.

- The UAE has some of the friendliest police I've ever seen. Oh, and they are extremely professional and responsive, and are insanely good at what they do [1].

In my 14 years living there, I have never once been robbed, have never even witnessed a crime or robbery, nor have I ever heard of someone (e.g., friends) falling victim to one. The only incident was a break-in at the home of a family we knew. That's it.

And I hear that Doha is even safer than Dubai!

[1]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Mabh...

Safe for tourists, not for residents.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/27/dubai-...

Yep, their human rights track record is terrible, but even with that, Dubai is still safer than most other large cities.

What do you mean by "tourists"? Did you miss the part where I say that I lived in the UAE for 14 years?

You are probably not an Indian construction worker.

...or a woman

I'm not. Read my bio. But a fact is a fact: Dubai is one of the safest cities in the world.

I think you are willfully missing the point. You cannot compare Dubai's "Safe" to other place's "Safe" because other places view things like woman being raped as "unsafe" and Dubai does not.

Being an Indian construction worker, means being more likely to be killed institutionally. For example by ridiculous hazards at work that any other "Safe" place outlawed decades ago. It could also mean being arrested, harrassed and deported (or arrested and thrown in a hole, I don't know; racist gulag numbers are not exactly officially published) for speaking out of line.

Let's not even touch religion.

You are perfectly correct that Dubai is "Safe" for some definition of "Safe" suitable only for White or Arabian, Muslim or rich Christian Men.

That's exactly the point. I am not including the government in my definition of safety. Rather, the focus is purely on safety from an illegal point of view (murder, rape, robbery, etc.).

This is not a very good way to look at things, because a place without any law and order would be "safe" by these standards. If rape is not illegal, women being raped is allowed. If murder is not illegal, people being stabbed or shot to death would be just the normal way of life.

Not my idea of "safe".

"Yep they commit atrocious humans rights violations and systematically abuse migrant workers, but at least you can leave your car unlocked." And Mussolini made the trains run on time.

I'm just stating facts here, no need to get emotional mate.

Dubai is plenty safe unless you're a woman getting raped aka enjoying sex outside of marriage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Marte_Dalelv

I've been living in Abu Dhabi (capital of UAE) for the last 12 years and although I started getting more and more annoyed with the country, I can absolutely confirm what you're saying. Safety is almost always at the top of the pros/cons list.

Haha, that sounds like back home in western Maine, if you're a local who isn't a known drunk or stoner. Even then, you can leave everything unlocked, without fear

unfortunately, Hong Kong is turning authoritarian too, with only a semblance of democracy under the iron thumb of Beijing.

Didn't Hong Kong pass over to China about a decade ago?

It was 20 years ago, in 1997.

Hong Kong is still a SAR.

But slightly more and more in name only, with Beijing controlling it more, politically.

Unfortunately England sold out Hong Kong

They didn't have much choice. The new territories had to go back because they were leased. So all that they could have held on to was Hong Kong island and Kowloon. There wasn't the infrastructure to maintain those areas. And China was a very different place in those days, the insane crap that they said to the British during handover negotiations made anything Donald Trump saying today look intelligent... It was a stressful time to be living there. So today Hong Kong is a Chinese colony instead of a slightly (yes, slightly) more benign British colony.

Slightly? As far as I know, the United Kingdom is a democracy while China is an oppressive, imperialist, authoritarian state under oligarchic rule, with complete disregard for human rights or the cries for independence and democracy from its dependencies. Would it be ruled by Britain instead of China there would be a world of difference, don't kid yourself.

Can you name a democratic country with 1 billion+ people that has achieved what China has in such a short period of time? Nope. Do you think China would have progressed the same if it wasn't managed as an autocracy?

So the ends justify the means, is what you're saying?

Nope. Read my comment again. Here, I'll make it easier:

> Can you name a democratic country with 1 billion+ people that has achieved what China has in such a short period of time? Nope. Do you think China would have progressed the same if it wasn't managed as an autocracy?

Who cares 1,300,000,000 people live without liberty and are subject to humans rights violations? They make cheap shit. Is that what you're saying?

I asked you two questions, and you answer with another question.

> They make cheap shit.

What?

Dubai is really not safe for unmarried couples. It's a total non-starter, even for a holiday.

This article is more about systemic state corruption though and not petty street crime. There's still gangsters in Singapore and Hong Kong, and if you worked at a newspaper writing about them and their connections to politicians you would have problems. If you decided to start writing about the prostitution racket in Dubai you could disappear pretty quick too.

I was replying to a comment about crime in Mexico City, not the article.

Or Montreal!

Never been, but I would assume it's an amazing place. I would love to visit someday :)

Maybe I was lucky, but I never felt in danger in major US cities walking literally everywhere. While in D.F. I had some anxiety outside of central roads.

It's hard to give some objective analysis, but I don't personally feel safe walking alone at night in large areas of NYC, Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, St Louis, Miami, etc.

What parts of NYC?

I wouldn't want to walk around Washington Heights in Manhattan alone at night; I didn't feel terribly safe there during the daytime.

The Bronx is not a terribly safe place either.

Sure, downtown/midtown Manhattan are very safe, but Manhattan is a minority of the overall area of NYC.

Most of the Bronx, about half of Queens, about 1/3 of Brooklyn. Manhattan is mostly gentrified these days, with only a handful of exceptions. Staten Island is odd b/c it is barely walkable to begin with, so it's neither safe nor dangerous to walk.

To be fair, unless you live in the hood in the Bronx or Brooklyn, why would you be walking around alone at night anyway?

Also... in which parts of Queens did you feel unsafe? Queens is actually quite safe.

Everything is relative to what you're used to I guess. I'm from a Canadian suburb, where a 16 years old girl who got attacked in a dark alley at 3:30 am while alone made the news for 3 months because that was the worse thing that had happened in decades.

Now I'm in Boston, in a heavily gentrified area, and I'm scared shitless after 11 pm. People all tell me it's a super safe area, but I know a few people who got mugged a few blocks away in various occasions.

Maybe it's just bad luck. Maybe compared to other areas, a few people getting their backpack stolen is nothing. But feelings are not always rationals. I don't feel safe here.

I was more scared just outside work at the Twitter HQ in SF (Market and 10th) than I was anywhere in DF.

There are parts of SF I'd rather not be in at any time of day. That includes the area around Twitter HQ.

Why? You find homeless people scary?

Let's be real: some of the people on drugs or with mental illness can be really aggressive.

Homelessness is not a root cause for things; it is one symptom of fundamental problems that people have. Other symptoms include aggressiveness and unpredictability. These other symptoms may also be at least a partial reason why the people are homeless.

Not all nor even a majority of homeless people developed countries are aggressive or unpredictable, but the risk is higher. Around here most of them are quite tame and humble, at least most of the time, and I'd much rather use the word "weak" than "bad", though.

But yes, homeless people can be scary. Being a stranger in SF, I was somewhat alarmed when driving in the city and finding myself in a central neighbourhood where I wouldn't want to stop at the red light.

Not been to Mexico City, but I have been in many US cities (NYC, L.A., SF, San Diego, Salt Lake…) a variety of times during a 15 year span. One time I will never forget I was on the bus from the L.A. airport to downtown, and chit-chatting comes out that I was staying at hostel downtown. A couple of reactions were priceless, like I were a dead man walking.

It was perfectly fine in the end.

The thing is if you are showing bling in some form or simply being unaware, you are at risk _anywere_ in a city. Hell I got cash-robbed inside a Times Square restaurant when I was 18, thinking I was getting a good deal on a Sony ultra slim CD player with 30 seconds skip buffer.

> It is not like a safe European city center where you can go almost anywhere alone on foot at any time of day.

Which European city are you referring to? The major European cities (e.g., Paris, London, and Berlin) don't fit this description either.

When were you last in central London or Paris? It's been a long time since Limehouse or Montparnasse were dangerous to walk in at night.

Yea, but that's like restricting NYC to Manhattan. I wouldn't feel that unsafe walking the majority of Manhattan at night either.

Or for another city center, I go downtown inner harbor/fells point/federal hill Baltimore at night plenty. Most city centers in America are perfectly safe any time of day.

Head out of canary wharf onto the isle of dogs. Or parts of peckham. Or West Ham. Christ.

Buddy, what wonderful drug are you on? Writing this from isle of dogs, which is damn awesome, and extremely safe.

Canary Wharf - noone lives there - super safe at night...

"European city center".

But I know, it's a broad definition.

If the goal is to prove that going to some godforsaken suburb miles out into the countryside is dangerous, sure. This is true in any country. But not if you live in an actual city.

Shorter to write: i don't know London

As a Cornishman, this is basically what's taught in the schools, yes. You live in a godforsaken suburb miles out of London but you pretend that, unlike us, you somehow live in a city. ;-)

"isle of dogs. Or parts of peckham. Or West Ham."

All of these places are in London. They have London postcodes, are inside the M25, and are administered by the Mayor of London.

Pretty much every major city worldwide has large suburbs that have their postcodes and are administered by the same municipal government, but they're clearly not included in the "European city center" designation. They are part of the city, but not part of the city center; and for a multimillion city the difference (and distances!) are significant.

They are all "inner" London.

don't agree with berlin either, of course some areas are more criminal (almost anywhere), but going on foot alone is still possible, even at night and i've been to most of the trouble-spots.

Also: Munich, it's unbelievable safe, more boring than berlin, but safer.

Personally I feel that Berlin gives off an unsafe feeling on your first few nights but you as you stay longer you start to see there is no reason for it, I mean I remember going past a train station at night and some guy was playing some pots as drums, while some man sat cross legged with a beer listening. And another time walking up a dodgy back alley into a lively square with an outdoor cinema

I've been around central Berlin a good bit and honestly never had such a problem. If anything I end up with the opposite problem, I'm the foreign hipster who hasn't kept up with the trends enough to realize that this area has gentried sufficiently that I am no longer welcome here, because it's now an area for rich West Germans.

Alexanderplatz and others http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/berlin/polizei/die-23-unsiche...

Speaking of Italy, you'd be hard pressed to feel endangered in Rome, Milan, Turin etc. Naples can get a bit sketchy, but even then. Switzerland and Austria also seem pretty relaxed in my experience.

Trieste seems pretty sketchy too (easternmost major city in Northern Italy). I was traveling from Milan to Croatia, got all mixed up on trains, and got in to Trieste at about 8pm with no connecting bus to Croatia until the following morning and most hotels/hostels full for the night. Dodgy people walking around and weird vibe in general. Luckily I got a ride out that night.

I really enjoyed Trieste during the day a couple of years ago, delightful and historic. Haven't seen much of it at night though. It's not unlikely it's got a larger percentage of folks coming through from the Balkans / Eastern Europe than other Italian cities due to its position. There's been tension in the country in the past couple of decades due to inbound migrations from that area.

Perhaps not physically threatened, but I've been pick-pocketed both in Rome and Naples. In that regard I definitely feel much safer in, say, Berlin.

Not surprising at all, in Italy Naples is infamous for being the city where things disappear unless they're well nailed down.

Your Italian visa.

Vienna / Austria is like this.

This is why I prefer to live in parts of the US that resemble the demographics of most European city centers. It turns out that tends to be kind of a demographic optimum...

I've been living in Mexico for 8 years. I'm from Europe and married to a Mexican woman. I've lived in a couple different states (DF, Edo. Mexico, Queretaro, Veracruz, Quintana Roo).

I've never once felt not safe, or seen violence.

I see the news and I really wonder if I'm living in a different country.

European married to a Mexican woman (From Monterrey) here as well.

She realises that there are bad things in Mexico, but sometimes she actually feels more scared here in Europe due to the terrorist events that have happened lately. Though there has been only one in my country, she really hates going to Brussels.

As she tells me, it is worse with terrorism because it involves civilians minding their own business, whilst most of the terrible news from Mexico actually happens due to narcos and not to random civilians on the street.

As I have not lived in Mexico, I can't really compare the two. But by the sounds of her and her family, it's not as bad as the news would have you believe. (Or, alternatively, they happen to live in a good part of Monterrey / Mexico).

You should try living in Sinaloa, Sonora, Tamaulipas, etc..

The places you listed are all the safe states, which effectively is a different country.

It's not super complex, the states near the Gulf/Yucatan are generally the safe ones.

Here's a map of Mexico with intentional homicide rates (data from 2011) by state:

http://www.geocurrents.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Mexic...

FWIW, Baja California Sur, though not near Gulf/Yucatan is pretty low on the list too.

Baja California and Sonora have significantly lower rates than Chihuahua, but all three border the US.

I have pretty much the same story (but 4 years) and lived in Sonora and Nayarit. I have close friends living in Sinaloa (expats of 20 years).

I now live in Guanajuato, and the only crime I've heard of first or second hand in the years in mx was a worker taking some cash which was laying around, and some gringo's stealing from each other.

On the other hand I lost three friends in hurricane Odile, so I guess don't forget nature can be a much bigger threat if not given enough respect.

I lived in Tequisquiapan for a few years which is pretty close!

Didn't expect to find someone on HN living in El Bajío. :)

I realise this is a bit of a late comment and you might miss it. But is there any way to contact you? As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I am married to a Mexican woman and I was wondering what it is like to live in Mexico as a European (Specifically software engineers, which you might happen to be as well ;-) )

Almost hard to believe that you could have gotten mugged in that part of DF. But maybe at night?

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