No one has been murdered in Norway so far this year

Muggings are uncommon in neighborhoods like locust point,hampden, Roland park, federal hill, charles village, Patterson park, etc.

Even in "rougher" areas of the white l (station north, Remington, Barclay) Muggings are still uncommon

There's a lot of unrecorded relationships, but family and intimate partners make up a pretty big chunk of the homicides in the US.

Even European countries with a decent social safety net still have some drug addicts (mainly heroin) who are desperate for money to buy that expensive drug and will engage in petty crime to do so, e.g. pickpocketing, mugging, bicycle theft, theft of copper wiring, etc. (And yes, some states provide assistive infrastructure for addicts, but there are still demographics that avoid it and continue their addict to street drugs.) The fact that there is almost no shooting going on has more to do with legal and/or cultural pressures on guns than the existence of a welfare state making life OK for everyone.

Presumably people with mental illness or certain criminal convictions are excluded?

>Why that is may be up for debate, but I certainly don't think a couple years of conscripted service right out of high school plays a role--or else you'd never hear about American vets killing anyone.

This is likely self selecting. If everyone in Switzerland serves then their average vet is essentially their average citizen, the murder rate for an Average American is probably low. The type of people who enlist in the US are not typically "average."

Irrelevant but ok.

>A conscripted army by definition has lax standards of vetting and lesser standards of training

In Switzerland: "People determined unfit for service, where fitness is defined as "satisfying physically, intellectually and psychological requirements for military service or civil protection service and being capable of accomplishing these services without harming oneself or others", are exempted from service but pay a 3% additional annual income tax until the age of 37, unless they are affected by a disability. Almost 20% of all conscripts were found unfit for military or civilian service in 2008; the rate is generally higher in urban cantons such as Zurich and Geneva than in the rural ones"

>There's nothing magical about getting yelled at for 90 days that makes them less likely to solve problems with violence

You really think average Joe who walks into walmart and walks out with a rifle is going to be as responsible a gun owner as someone with military training? Also Basic in Switzerland is ~140 days for reference...

Which movie is that from? I dont remember ever being yelled at during basic. Our "staff" never felt the need to raise thier voices. If you are infantry you know to be most afraid when the training staff say nothing.