This was all over the news.
Nigeria is a
developing nation. They have a homicide rate over six times ours. It is important to compare ourselves to other
developed nations, and if we do, we'll see that we lead them all in homicide rates by a country mile. Let's compare, say, the thirty most developed.
From
Developed Countries List 2022 and
Murder Rate by Country 2022:
United States: 4.96
Liechtenstein is next at 2.64, followed by Estonia at 2.12. No others are above 2.
Canada is 1.76, Belgium 1.69, Finland 1.63, Malta 1.59. No others are above 1.5.
Israel, for all of its troubles, is at 1.49. The UK and France are both 1.2. Sweden 1.08, Denmark 1.01. No others are above 1.
Eighteen others are below 1, including Germany 0.95, New Zealand 0.74, and Norway 0.47, less than a tenth ours.
The lowest of the top 30 developed nations are Luxembourg at 0.34, Japan at 0.24, and Singapore at 0.16.
Nigeria, by the way, is at 34.52.
We also know that
While the number of gun deaths in the U.S. fell for the second consecutive year in 2023, it remained among the highest annual totals on record.
www.pewresearch.org
Taking that as a rough standard, it means that the US has a firearms-only murder rate of about 4.0 (roughly 79% of 4.96), which is still significantly higher than all murders from other developed countries—double or triple of most, or more.
But there's one more hitch: The US date for the murder rate was from 2018. Go back to the Pew article and you'll see this:
Because in the two years between 2018 and 2020, gun murders in our country climbed sharply beyond their already-skyrocketed levels. It's getting a lot worse, quickly.
We have a *massive* gun problem.