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Comment by fomine3 | Hacker News Reader

Just ignore Palestine from original argument

The purpose of the argument was to present areas we innately consider “dangerous” and try to pretend like they are in fact safer than America by secretly disregarding all the deaths that happen at the hands of government agents. But it is those very deaths that make us consider those areas dangerous. This isn’t exclusive to Palestine, but it is the most egregious example.

This argument is disingenuous and should be called out at such.

Murders committed by people wearing cute badges in their arm are still murders.

I regret including Palestine and Afghanistan in my original comment. I didn't mean to be disingenuous. I should have included more countries like Argentina, Kenya, and India that aren't politically charged. My main point is that 5.5 should be seen as absurdly high for a first world country, and not just a little worse than usual.

I wonder how the long tail of murders per “neighborhood” looks in those other countries. It’s well-known that in America the vast majority of murders happen in tiny areas. And if one were to look at only the predominant race in America, the murder rate would match the best of the examples you just listed (3.0, the same as racially-homogeneous India).

That’s not to say that minority murder means less in any way, but on the contrary to question whether America records it to an extent other countries might not. I do not know if this is the case or not, and I don’t know how one might be able to tell. But I’ve personally been in slums of third world countries that the police would flat out refuse to answer calls to, and I can’t imagine anyone there was taking the time to report each death to the United Nations when even their own local police couldn’t give enough of a shit (/were too scared) to show up.

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