A lot of people, especially Americans, like to think of Americans as a uniquely violent people, but this is really a systemic and cultural problem as well as a failing of individuals. People used to think of Glasgow as uniquely violent but that problem has been greatly reduced thanks to the VRU.
What's this mean exactly?
- there's an epidemiology of violence: untreated violence tends to breed more violence. Fear of violence and responses to violence cause violence of their own. Either retaliation or pre-emptively carrying weapons.
- squalor tends to breed violence in the same way as it breeds disease
- this stuff often starts at school (see US "school to prison pipeline")
- A&E departments of hospitals are convenient contact points for people who've been stabbed or punched - this is an opportunity to discourage them from taking revenge or starting more fights
- also it recognises that the effectiveness of police before a crime has been committed is (rightly) pretty limited, but social services can perform other kinds of interventions.
But, unfortunately, political correctness won over, and the practice is mostly gone now -- and the crime rates have since soared. Giuliani was once called "America's Mayor" -- my how quickly times change.
All Giulliani did was move the problems to New Jersey.
It was successful in reducing crime in his jurisdiction. It didn't really reduce crime in the NYC metro area relative to anywhere else. Crime dropped off a lot over the 90s and '00s everywhere.
There's a really wide gulf between police state tactics that ignore people's rights (90s stop and frisk) and the current situation in parts of the country where crimes with a victim that people are complaining about are ignored or given such a small slap on the risk they have a positive ROI.
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p0106a/overall-crime-new...
And all this without having to stop and search some rando black or brown dude walking down the road. This categorically proves that stop and frisk had no impact on crime rates at all. Los Angeles also experienced similarly historically low crime rates and had no stop and frisk. I can’t imagine how someone can live in a liberal democracy and be ok with authoritarian behavior like stop and search.
I’d say in order the biggest determinants are: culture, social cohesion, and poverty.
I put culture and social cohesion ahead of income because plenty of poorer asian countries do much better than richer european countries.
This sounds like borderline race theory or something Charles Murray would argue... So basically you’re saying that richer white people in homogeneous states are less violent than the states with poor, more diverse populations? I don’t think it’s based on race or culture, but income and class are definitely factors.
Culture is so obviously a factor: why does Switzerland have so many guns and similar average income to New Hampshire but much less violence? Clearly culture has an effect.
So maybe cities have the same order of magnitude effect in increasing crime as guns do - what would you suggest we do about that? Should we lower violent crime by banning cities and banning guns, or should we focus on the root problems of culture, social cohesion, and poverty?
Also: Switzerland also has a ton of guns and major cities, violent crime rate is near the bottom - is suspect because their culture, social cohesion, and efforts to minimize poverty.
Switzerland has a ton of guns but not a ton of ready access to ammunition. Also according to this article [1] the U.S. has far more guns per person than Switzerland.
According to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, there are about 89 civilian-owned guns for every 100 people who live in the United States. Switzerland ranks third in terms of gun ownership, the Survey estimates, with 3.4 million guns among its population of nearly eight million.
So NH having a high amount of guns isn't really a counter example. The point wasn't that guns are the sole cause, but that their prevalence makes it harder to resolve a violence problem (that stems from many sources).
Or if I am assuming too much about the original posters view, I can instead just say this is my view.
On the other end of the spectrum of marginally more harm but dramatically less freedom, would you suggest that we go into a covid shutdown every flu season? Or compelled speech laws? Or banning cars because the harm they cause? It’s all a balance between freedom and harm.