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Comment by arethuza | Hacker News Reader

Murder rates are often given per 100,000 inhabitants - so size of country isn't really a factor:

   United States: 4.8
   United Kingdom: 1.2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

vacri's statement seems completely accurate.

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While I agree the US is far more violent than the UK, most of the US's incremental violence is explained by the drug war. Even if we had zero guns and the UK had US-style gun possession and laws, I suspect US drug laws (and other forms of extreme economic/political/legal inequality) would give us a higher murder rate.

And if we had a more sensible culture around alcohol use in the UK, particularly in my native Scotland, I'm sure we'd have a much lower level of all violence.

A large portion of violent crime (~75%) in the US involves either family members or other acquaintances ("nonstrangers"). I'm sure some of that relates to drugs, but most of it probably doesn't.

http://bjs.gov/content/pub/press/vvcs9310pr.cfm

Thanks, I missed the important word 'rate' in vacri's post in my haste.

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