For the record, I looked up the homicide rates in France and Massachusetts, a European country and an American state that I figured would have similar demographics. Massachusetts turned out to have the higher homicide rate, despite it having both a whiter population and a higher per capita income, as I later found out. What do you make of this comparison, SPC?
Massachusetts is not exactly known as a haven for permissive gun laws, to say the least. In fact, it appears that France is actually more permissive in some areas, such as magazine restrictions and "assault weapons." Thus, I'm not quite sure what the point of your comparison is. The point of my comparison was to more closely examine your contention that the homicide rates of the United States and Europe cannot be compared due to demographic differences, which I did by comparing the murder rates of an American state and a European country with similar demographics. But if that comparison is unfair because Massachusetts has stricter gun control laws, we can easily replace Massachusetts with New Hampshire - the latter, a state that
is known as a haven of permissive gun laws - and France with Austria, whose demographics are similar to New Hampshire's.
Now, according to the most readily available information, New Hampshire's homicide rate is 1.1 murders per 100,000 people, contrasted with 0.9 murders per 100,000 people in Austria. Given that New Hampshire is marginally whiter and has more lenient gun control laws than Austria, this doesn't exactly endorse the claim that the primary influences on the murder rate are gun control and race.
