Being a secular homeschooler is fun and confusing to most people

@ninalanyon that's the us for you

@chick95 Where I live I have seen six year old children take the bus to school unaccompanied.

@ninalanyon I've really considered moving to at least Alaska. But Canada and back to France are on my list

@chick95 Is it really that bad? I'm pretty sure there are safe places in the US too.

I used to travel to Cary NC quite often on business and it seemed pretty safe. I vaguely remember that it was reckoned to be the safest place in the US. Several of my colleagues told me that they didn't bother locking their cars.

But not far away is Durham, part of which has one of the highest murder rates in the US.

What I mean is that perhaps you don't need to move so far because the dangers are not evenly distributed.

@ninalanyon Where I am shootings are rare, 50 miles away in Montgomery Alabama it happens almost daily and the police chief they imported from New Orleans to "clean up the violence' is now suspended and they aren't saying why.

@robb65 [quote]Where I am shootings are rare[/quote]
The more I read and hear about such things in the US the more surreal they seem to be. What does rare mean where you are?

The most recent report of a shooting I can find in the nearest big town (Drammen, Norway) to where I live is from ten years ago; the only person injured was the shooter.

@ninalanyon I'm unaware of a shooting here in the past year. There may have been and I just missed it. Several years ago two guys were found shot to death in a car, drug deal gone bad and while there were leads it was never solved. Before that, a guy I knew caught someone trespassing, got in an argument, and killed a young man. He got off on self defense but probably should not have. That's been 10 years or so. I could name another handful spread out over a few decades..
I'm in a rural area and almost everyone I know owns guns. Most of us out in the rural areas grew up with guns and either hunt or did at some point in the past. I have guns that I've bought, I have guns I inherited from my father in law, guns I inherited from my dad, and one that had belonged to my moms stepfather before it became my dad's (that was the first shot gun I ever shot, probably when I was about 10 or 12). We aren't out running around shooting at random people.
I'm roughly 50 miles south of Montgomery Alabama which is where the closest TV station is located. Every time we turn on the news someone has been shot. A lot of it is drug or gang related. Sometimes it's stupid people doing stupid shit, a few months back a young guy went missing and when the case was finally solved it turned out one of his "friends" had accidentally shot him in the head while shooting up a house. Sometimes innocent bystanders are hit. Certain parts of the city are worse than others but it seems to be spreading. It's worth pointing out that a lot of the people involved are too young to legally have a gun, or have criminal records that should have prevented them from legally buying a gun.

@robb65 Ouch. Sounds uncomfortable even in your rural area.

The US murder rate per capita is ten times higher than Norway according to Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

@ninalanyon Firearms have been the leading cause of death for US children and teens since 2020, representing 19% of all deaths for children 18 years and younger in 2021.


However, regional variations are quite large

@ElwoodBlues Looks like @chick95 should reconsider moving to Alaska!

@ninalanyon Agreed! I happen to live in the northeast; safest part of the country, and it's still alarming.

Also, a little secret about living in rural areas: the motor vehicle death rate is far higher than urban areas. Drunk driving, winding roads, foul weather, and just the overall time spent in a car

[b]https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F7lkj13zleiba1.png[/b]

@ElwoodBlues It's a bit harder to compare road deaths because the measures are different (total population versus driver population)

But on the gross per capita measure the US is six times worse than Norway, 12.9 versus 2 per 100 thousand inhabitants. About three times worse per unit distance driven, 8.3 versus 3.0 per billion vehicle kilometre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

Going by the drink drive behaviour of some of my otherwise respectable colleagues in the US these numbers don't surprise me.

@ElwoodBlues Hw the heck is Alaska so high with their gun fatalities? I mean, Alaska just doesn't even come up when people talk about dangerous parts of the US.
But also, how is NY so low?

My own state stats - seems legit on that chart but a lot of other states just seems skewed.

Like Wyoming having more than Cali?

Yeah that chart just - something isn't right. Unless they are counting self-inflicted. Yeah I think most anyone would want to do that if they lived in a BFE state like WY or Montana.

@CestManan Alaska is high from hunting incidents id assume

@CestManan [quote] seems skewed.

Like Wyoming having more than Cali? [/quote]

Remember that it is per capita.

@CestManan For one thing, it's per capita. California is low because the deaths are distributed over a large population. For another thing, suicide is a big proportion of gun deaths, near half I think. So maybe Alaska is the suicide capital of the US?

How is NYC so low? I don't know why it shouldn't be low. NY has a big tax base because big financial businesses and rich people want to locate there. So the money allows the city to offer lots of health services, job services, etc.

NYC was bad during drug gang turf wars; I guess those are a thing of the past. And [i]The Godfather[/i] was fiction. My chart was gun deaths, but lets switch to violent crimes per capita.

NYC has 538.9 violent crimes per 100K population. That puts it 59th on the list of violence in US cities; exceeded by Jacksonville (631), St Petersburg (698), Miami (720), and Orlando (744), to name a few [data from wikipedia].

In fact, there are five whole states that have higher rates of violent crime per capita! I'm talking to YOU, Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, & Tennessee!!

[b]Disclaimer:[/b] I do not, nor have I ever, resided in New York City nor New York state, although I have visited both city and state upon occasion. I collected this NYC data because I often see NYC wrongly badmouthed.