Chicago gang violence shows no signs of stopping

Gun Violence in U.S. Cities Compared to the Deadliest Nations in the World

The pattern is staggering. A number of U.S. cities have gun homicide rates in line with the most deadly nations in the world.

If it were a country, New Orleans (with a rate 62.1 gun murders per 100,000 people) would rank second in the world.
Detroit's gun homicide rate (35.9) is just a bit less than El Salvador (39.9).
Baltimore's rate (29.7) is not too far off that of Guatemala (34.8).
Gun murder in Newark (25.4) and Miami (23.7) is comparable to Colombia (27.1).
Washington D.C. (19) has a higher rate of gun homicide than Brazil (18.1).
Atlanta's rate (17.2) is about the same as South Africa (17).
Cleveland (17.4) has a higher rate than the Dominican Republic (16.3).
Gun murder in Buffalo (16.5) is similar to Panama (16.2).
Houston's rate (12.9) is slightly higher than Ecuador's (12.7).
Gun homicide in Chicago (11.6) is similar to Guyana (11.5).
Phoenix's rate (10.6) is slightly higher than Mexico (10).
Los Angeles (9.2) is comparable to the Philippines (8.9).
Boston rate (6.2) is higher than Nicaragua (5.9).
New York, where gun murders have declined to just four per 100,000, is still higher than Argentina (3).
Even the cities with the lowest homicide rates by American standards, like San Jose and Austin, compare to Albania and Cambodia respectively.
Yes, it's true we are comparing American cities to nations. But most of these countries here have relatively small populations, in many cases comparable to large U.S. metros.

The sad reality is that many American cities have rates of gun homicides comparable to the some of the most violent nations in the world.

A Growing Divide in Urban Gun Violence

The places way above the line for gun murders, like Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Newark, St. Louis, and Chicago, all have large, very segregated black communities with a history of disinvestment, outmigration, and, except for Chicago, not big immigration in recent decades. With the exception of the South Bronx, New York never had demographic collapse on the same scale. What the Detroit's and Baltimore's of American cities also had was extremely high concentrated poverty that mapped onto race.

There are quite a number of cities — Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, and others — which are far above the line.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/01/growing-divide-urban-gun-violence/4328/

Race, unfortunately and tragically, factors into gun death at the metro level. The share of the population that is black is positively related to both the overall rate of gun death (.56) and even more so with gun-related homicides (.72). The pattern is similar for the share of the population that is comprised of young black males which is also positively related to the overall rate of gun death (.55) and murder by gun (.70). That said, we find no significant association between any type of gun death and the share of the population that is Hispanic. The importance of gun control cannot be minimized. The state level is the appropriate level to examine this. And our previous state level analysis found gun deaths to be significantly lower in states with stricter gun control laws.


The rate of gun deaths is negatively correlated with states that ban assault weapons, require trigger locks, and mandate safe storage requirements for guns.


Death by gun clearly reflects the class divides which vex America, being substantially more likely in poorer, less advantaged places. And this concentrated nature of gun violence makes it easier for those in more affluent and sheltered places to ignore its consequences. Yes, our nation is in desperate needs of strategies to bridge its burgeoning class divide, but if we truly care to limit the carnage caused by guns in our society, controlling them is the best place to start.