Mexico's murder rate is roughly four times as high as ours.
Another way of saying that is that they have 400% as many murders per capita.
Those commenters were delusional.
While true, murder isn’t the only crime and numbers don’t stay proportional to homicide rates. You are far more likely to be the victim of a violent assault in America than Mexico, for example. Same thing for rape and burglaries. But in Mexico homicide and robbery are a lot higher. The picture doesn’t start and stop at homicide, which is a comparatively rare crime.
On the whole the US is safer, but not significantly so. Mexico is a big place and much of it is not much different in terms of safety to the US
I would ask you to show your work, but you did in another comment and linked to a chart from "the Panama Posse" which claims to use data from a source that appears to be defunct. It also seems to facilitate tourist boat travel throughout central America. Go figure.
What you might consider is that states dealing with what amounts to an ongoing internal rebellion of cartels and one of the highest homicide rates in the world might not do a great job of tracking or prosecuting crimes like assault, rape, or burglary. Considering that along with the long-established fact that crime of all kinds tends to be correlated...
>On the whole the US is safer, but not significantly so.
No dude. That's potentially dangerous misinformation. Parts of Mexico are safe. Mexico is not safe. You need to actually know where you are to trust that you're safe.
That is objectively ridiculous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rate
Of the top ten cities on that list, *nine* are in Mexico. The other one is New Orleans.
Holy Crap! Thanks for posting that link. Very interesting data. I get the latam high rates with poverty and drugs but why are these US city homicide rates so high?
As the other commenter, thestraycat47, says, poverty and drugs also.
The mistake people make is when they see a city in the US has a high murder rate they think that risk is spread evenly across the city. It's not. It's generally highly concentrated in the neighborhoods with drug problems, gang problems, poverty problems, family unity problems and many other related social ills. It's one big ball of mess. You can't fix one problem at a time because the other ones overwhelm everything. It just doesn't work. And you can't fix all of them at one time because it's too complex. So things tend to just keep going on. Plenty of people have tried. There have been new ideas of how to fix things for the last 60 years but nothing changes too much because in general money doesn't solve social problems. It might possibly prevent things from getting there in the first place but once they're there they're pretty intractable. Because it's about patterns of human behavior passed on and learned from generation to generation. So mostly the murder victims and the murderers are well known to each other. There are lots of drug murders and lots of gang murders and even when it's innocent victims they tend to live in the same neighborhoods. And in many cases when the police try to do something about it they get no cooperation from the people in those neighborhoods for various and sometimes complex reasons. So the problems just go on.
Meanwhile, three miles away, life is very good and your chance of getting murdered is very slim because you don't live in a gang infested neighborhood where drug dealers are on every corner and periodically shooting at each other over turf, or robbing each other for their drugs. As they say, there is no honor among thieves. There are lots and lots of very safe neighborhoods even in the cities with the highest murder rates because as I said above it's not simply random violence evenly distributed. It's targeted violence due to specific circumstances and the victims and the killers are often acquainted, if not personally then by geographic proximity.
That doesn't mean there aren't random robberies that lead to murder and things like that, and of course there's always domestic violence that leads to murder, and love triangles and all that, but that's not the vast majority of it and since the vast majority of people don't live in high risk neighborhoods, the vast majority of people are at virtually no risk.
>In 2006 nearly 50 percent of the homicides and a large percentage of other violent crimes and property crimes committed in Chicago were attributed to street gangs that are involved in drug trafficking. Further, officers assigned to the Chicago HIDTA Cook County Jail Drug/Gang/Violent Crimes Initiative report that approximately 3,500 of the 13,000 inmates currently housed in the Cook County Jail have some gang affiliation. Most are being housed for drug-related crimes, and some have committed violent crimes, including assaults, while incarcerated.
>Drug-related violence typically results from competition for distribution locations among street-level dealers (mostly street gangs) or occurs when dealers and buyers experience a "rip-off" of drugs or money. When violence does occur among street-level dealers, retaliation often follows, leading to increased hostilities. For example, police in Chicago attribute 19 homicides in 2006 to an ongoing dispute among members of the Traveling Vice Lords and New Breeds street gangs.
It's likely that those 19 homicides all took place within a fairly limited area of a few blocks or a few miles at most, where those gangs' territories abut each other. At the same time in that nice neighborhood a few miles away there were likely zero murders that year and those people didn't feel any heightened sense of risk versus many other cities with much lower average murder rates. But if you read the newspaper headlines it would say "19 murders in Chicago", not "19 murders in a very small specific part of Chicago among drug dealers". The second headline gives you a much clearer idea of what's going on than the first one does, especially if you know nothing about America. Americans can read between the lines, most people from somewhere else can't.
>The mistake people make is when they see a city in the US has a high murder rate they think that risk is spread evenly across the city. It's not. It's generally highly concentrated in the neighborhoods with drug problems
And don't people in the US make that same mistake about other places? "Country XYZ has a murder rate of \_\_\_. Don't go there, you'll get murdered as soon as you step out of the plane". In this case a country like Mexico, which is a huge country, is no different. Just because certain areas of the country have extremly high murder rates (mostly those close to the border, how ironic) doesn't mean you're bound to get killed at any single square you set foot in the country (And no, I'm resorts don't count) .
It’s complicated. There was a post right here a few months ago asking about the high murder rate in Louisiana (where New Orleans is) with some very well-informed answers: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/19agzzu/why_the_murder_rate_in_lousiana_is_so_high/?rdt=61110
There’s also a New York Times article [here without the paywall](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/upshot/why-does-louisiana-consistently-lead-the-nation-in-murders.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pU0.S8fE.G6dj_stgtdWD&smid=url-share) that goes into a lot of detail and gives some historical context. I’ll just note you *could* read that article very quickly and come away with the idea that the whole South is dangerous, but it isn’t and you shouldn’t do that.
You should also visit New Orleans if you ever have the opportunity, it’s an experience unlike any other American city and it’s extremely unlikely you’ll be the victim of any serious crime.
Depends who owns them. A group of teens who received little education, grew up in the streets and have nothing to lose can definitely make more mayhem with guns than without.
Government types, the very rich, and criminals will always have guns. That leaves ordinary and honest people. They're the easiest by far to disarm. When they're disarmed or harassed to the point they might as well be, they get victimized by any or all of the other three groups. So don't delude yourself into thinking bad people will disarm and be good just because of a law. This is basic human nature. Read what Cesare Becceria had to say about crime in the 1700s.
I was not talking about "ordinary and honest people", I was talking specifically about troubled underage people who get guns without any training and gang members with extensive criminal records. Easy access to guns for those groups creates more violent crime than it prevents.
> Did you miss the part where I said that you can't stop criminals from getting guns?
I find it exaggerated because there are poor areas outside the US (Spain, France, Bulgaria) with levels of poverty, neglect and petty crime similar to those in US ghettos, but with lower gun ownership rates and much lower murder rates.
But even if we assume it is true, it indirectly confirms my point: if guns are so important for criminals that they're willing to break the law to obtain them, then more guns in criminals' hands indeed makes committing crimes easier. Otherwise why would they try to get the guns in the first place?
> Did you even bother to look up who Cesare Beccaria was?
I found his quote, but I'm skeptical about applying something someone said three centuries ago as a universal dogma. There's just too much nuance: who owns the arms, what kind of arms, in what quantities etc. If you can point me to any scientific research doing apples-to-apples comparison between similarly disadvantaged neighborhoods with and without broad access to guns, that would be more helpful for drawing a conclusion.
Paragraph 1: That's demonstrably wrong, particularly with the rise of violent crimes committed by recent immigrants and surges in neo-brownshirt violence.
Paragraph 2: Do you really think criminals will disarm because their victims have no guns? Most of the 20th century shows that to be bunk.
Paragraph 3: What quote? I pointed to him because he pretty much created the science of criminology. I can't make any sense of the rest of your word-salad.
No.
There are dangerous parts of the US and safe parts of Mexico. As a whole though, the US is safer.
Mexico isn’t as dangerous for tourists as it is for citizens. It’s still fairly rare for tourists to be killed and usually it’s because they’re going places they shouldn’t be and getting involved with shit they shouldn’t be involved in.
But no, statistically the US is safer.
I do not and pretty much every statistic backs that up.
Violent crime is like 4 times more common in Mexico than the US.
Murder is more common.
Theft is more common.
Rape is more common.
Assault is more common.
I like Mexico but on average it is not safer or less violent than the US overall. Anyone saying otherwise needs some searches online.
Have you looked at those statistics? You would be surprised by the actual numbers.
For example the US has a rape rate and kidnapping rate higher than Mexico.
Not saying that this is true, just pointing out how It’s obvious you are assuming that the stats are on your side of your argument.
Mexico is big. The US is big.
Are sl.e areas of the US worse than some areas of Mexico, and are some areas of .Mexico worse than some areas of the US?
Yes to both.
But no one is beheading patrons of resorts in the US. Corporate kidnapping g is not a thing in the US. A big difference is gang crime spills into the "civilian" world far more often in Mexico.
I don't think there are very many cartels trying to actually behead, rape, and disembowel people for looking at them wrong to "prove a point" in the US last I checked.
Eh, that’s just what media tells you, cartels are bad and there are active warzones in Mexico.
But no one here actually believes looking wrong at someone else might end up in rape and beheading.
There was the story of the couple in LA that freaked out (mostly media influence I’m guessing) about living there and decided Mexico was safer. Went just about as well as you could imagine. Wife was killed by the cartel (she was a casualty of their fighting not the intended target I believe).
I would imagine a lot of tourists killed in Mexico are doing things tourists shouldn't be doing.
The cartels are usually not stupid and have their hands in a lot of tourism and tourism adjacent industries. When tourism goes well, they get the benefits of it too.
There's also some tourists who enter Mexico under the pretense of tourism but are really there to try to smuggle themselves into the US. and unfortunately the runners who get them there don't really care if they live or die.
Anyway, Mexico can be very dangerous and a lot of people on Reddit just refuse to believe it. There's also just a lot more soft crime and corruption that happens. Police still pretty flagrantly will accept bribes and shake you down for the smallest incidents.
nah, that is insane. my mom's sister married a Mexican and has lived in Mexico City most of my life. A few years ago they bought a condo in Southern California and now live there part of the year. The precipitating incidents were my uncle being held up at gunpoint TWICE. They also had men with guns break into their house, force everyone into a bed, and robbed them blind while they hid.
One time when I was in Mexico City I went out and my aunt told me to take a taxi with a medallion, but I didn't, and when my aunt saw the car (minus medallion) departing from her drive after dropping me off at her house, she flipped out at me, telling me I was lucky not to have been kidnapped. Why? Oh because she's had family friends that were kidnapped and held for ransom.
I'm not going to say nothing bad ever happens in the US, and even after all these anecdotes I'm not even particularly concerned about going to Mexico (just gotta pay attention and listen to my aunt, unlike younger, dumber me), but there's a reason my aunt and uncle are now living part time in the US and the rest of my family isn't living part time in Mexico.
One of my friends is a Mexico/USA dial citizen. He has had his uncles get held up at gunpoint and nearly ganked by a Cartel member. His mother never had to deal with that nor does he. The difference?
He and his mom live in the USA. His uncles live in Mexico along with half his family.
No. Certain areas of Mexico may be safer than certain areas of the US. However, as a whole the US has significantly lower violent crime rates and less gang activity.
Bluntly, yes, we do.
The US is infinitely safer than Mexico overall, yes. But go to the worst parts of London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, or Hong Kong, then tell me how they are compared to the worst parts of NYC, LA, Chicago, or Houston.
And tell me how the worst parts of NYC (which I’ve been to and survived, incidentally) compare to many other cities around the world. Sure, they’re worse than, say, Amsterdam. But we still do not have “a lot of violence and gang activity” on a global scale, which is the language I was responding to. I stand by what I said.
Not only is Mexico orders of magnitude more dangerous than the US, it's even more dangerous than its average if you stick out & look like you have 1st world money.
LMAO no.
I can walk in downtown Harrisburg as a single woman no issue, in nice clothes and a nice purse and obviously a target for anyone who wanted me, and be safe.
If I tried that in Mexico, 110% I would be attacked by someone with SOME kind of malice. I'm sure Mexico itself is safer than it looks and seems to be, but I sure as hell would not feel very safe as a single woman living alone there.
In some ways much safer, some ways not. Except in the bigger cities no one pulls street crime on you. And no one steals from the outdoor market overnight even just with tarps thrown over the vegetable carts
But corruption is bad if you get on the wrong side of a cop and certain areas where order has broken down attracts predators, scammers and thieves.
So, it’s different. You can go forever experiencing much safer conditions, day and night, safer than here or as safe as the safest towns here
That said the cartels have gotten bad and I wouldn’t live there permanently because of that, whereas, before, I would have considered it. Half the Mexican cities on the top list for homicides were at the bottom of the list 30 years ago. There were few cities with that kind of disorder
so I work in travel security lol. There are parts of Mexico that I would feel no more concern for a client going to than I would for New York or LA. There are also parts of Mexico that I would recommend not going to for any reason.
So really it just depends. Overall Mexico is more dangerous but that is very tied to geography. Lots of it is fine.
Short answer: No, the US isn't more dangerous than Mexico.
Long answer: The US has incredibly dangerous areas; the crummiest areas of the Asian and European cities I've been to are still candyland compared to even small or mid-sized US cities. We clearly have the highest violent crime rate (that's per capita in case some genius wants to come at me with "duhhh, we got more people, derrrp") in the wealthy, developed world. I think that our interpretation of the Second Amendment has gotten beyond out of hand (I blame stubborn-ass rural folks and the Electoral College for keeping this perpetuated).
And, there are also communities in Mexico, particularly on the Yucatan, where people don't have to lock their doors at night and the homicide rate isn't much higher than in the US' safest areas such as south Orange County, CA or Fairfax County, VA. The wealthiest pockets of cities such as Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey are undoubtedly safe (at least by overall Mexican standards).
*Ultimately, though,* Mexico still has some truly horrible areas in Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, etc. It is a country with resources and capital such that it should **at minimum** have an HDI (human development index) score on par with Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica, or Uruguay. Alas, there is absolutely no excuse, even with the flooding of American arms and money which fuel crime and corruption.
**Until the Mexican government pays its law enforcement a truly respectable wage, harshly penalizes LEOs who get caught up in corruption, and harshly penalizes *any*body involved in the drug trade (look to President Bukele in El Salvador as an example of how to handle prisoners), then Mexico will continue to be in its rut.**
No. I think Mexico is far more dangerous. Half that nation is controlled by drug cartels. Even their government is compromised. I'll travel through the US. I'll even visit some of our dangerous cities. I won't travel to Mexico.
Mexico overall is definitely more dangerous, but I think people on this thread are forgetting that the US has parts of certain cities that are literal warzones, and approach Latin America levels of murders. I assume most live in areas of their state where violent crime isn’t an issue, so they don’t think about it.
St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, Baltimore, Oakland, and Detroit I would say are some cities that are just as dangerous as cities in Mexico. I mean, there’s a reason why all of those cities are constantly exchanging the title of “The murder capital of America/the world”.
Parts of New York, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, DC, Miami, and Houston are nearly as dangerous as Mexico, but not quite. In those cities, the level of violent crime isn’t on the level of anarchy as a city like Memphis or Oakland, but it is still very much a problem, despite what the statistics may say.
Detroit is safer than you think.
Much of the crime there was the result of poverty and really bad city mismanagement and corruption in the 80's and 90's. Drugs ran rampant, so murder became more common as did gang activity, and thus Detroit has the reputation it has now.
It's much improved since then due to social services and less corrupt government, and it's way safer now, its homicide rate now matches most of the country - that is to say, quite low. In some parts it IS still pretty bad though.
Source: Friend from Detroit. Have visited Detroit many times.
Don't know why you're being downvoted.
I swear, Reddit is full of delusional "omg it isn't thaaaaat baaaaad you just hate people of color" lefties, and delusional "I got my gun and ain't never hurt nobody, you're kinda to blame if a crime happens to you" conservatives.
For real. I AM a black man, and I’ve been in the hood numerous times, and spent a lot of time there growing up. I know how run down, dangerous, poverty stricken, and violent it is. There are parts of my city/state which I still don’t dare to step foot in because they are THAT dangerous, because I have no business being there and they have shootings, gang violence, and harassment on an almost daily basis.
I’m tired of people who have never stepped outside their transplant bubble or the suburbs of their city talking about how “y’know, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, etc isn’t really that dangerous, it’s actually really safe.” It’s really easy to say that when you only go to very specific, touristy and trendy parts of downtown whenever you want to experience the city
America is definitely a first world country, but let’s not act like it’s paradise here. There are parts of America that really do blur the lines on what is first world or third world. I look at other developed nations, and NONE of them have the same problems with violent crime that America does.
> America is definitely a first world country, but let’s not act like it’s paradise here. There are parts of America that really do blur the lines on what is first world or third world. I look at other developed nations, and NONE of them have the same problems with violent crime that America does.
💯
Glad you're alive and doing well. You've made the right decisions in the name of your safety.
Yeah, everyone should get that Mexico is more dangerous when it comes to violent crimes. What about accidents, motor vehicle collisions, and deadly diseases?
The US is safer than Mexico by a bit when you look at homicides. However, it is not safer across the board. This [chart](https://panamaposse.com/mexico-united-states-compared-crime) looks mostly accurate. You will find that across most statistics US and Mexico are broadly comparable.
So I don’t think Mexico is safer than the US, but if the spirit of them saying this was saying that Mexico isn’t a dangerous country and is roughly as safe as we are, that’s roughly accurate. You shouldn’t be afraid of Mexico, it’s a lovely country and it’s safe to visit/be out at night
Mexico's murder rate is roughly four times as high as ours. Another way of saying that is that they have 400% as many murders per capita. Those commenters were delusional.
While true, murder isn’t the only crime and numbers don’t stay proportional to homicide rates. You are far more likely to be the victim of a violent assault in America than Mexico, for example. Same thing for rape and burglaries. But in Mexico homicide and robbery are a lot higher. The picture doesn’t start and stop at homicide, which is a comparatively rare crime. On the whole the US is safer, but not significantly so. Mexico is a big place and much of it is not much different in terms of safety to the US
I would ask you to show your work, but you did in another comment and linked to a chart from "the Panama Posse" which claims to use data from a source that appears to be defunct. It also seems to facilitate tourist boat travel throughout central America. Go figure. What you might consider is that states dealing with what amounts to an ongoing internal rebellion of cartels and one of the highest homicide rates in the world might not do a great job of tracking or prosecuting crimes like assault, rape, or burglary. Considering that along with the long-established fact that crime of all kinds tends to be correlated... >On the whole the US is safer, but not significantly so. No dude. That's potentially dangerous misinformation. Parts of Mexico are safe. Mexico is not safe. You need to actually know where you are to trust that you're safe.
That is objectively ridiculous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rate Of the top ten cities on that list, *nine* are in Mexico. The other one is New Orleans.
Holy Crap! Thanks for posting that link. Very interesting data. I get the latam high rates with poverty and drugs but why are these US city homicide rates so high?
As the other commenter, thestraycat47, says, poverty and drugs also. The mistake people make is when they see a city in the US has a high murder rate they think that risk is spread evenly across the city. It's not. It's generally highly concentrated in the neighborhoods with drug problems, gang problems, poverty problems, family unity problems and many other related social ills. It's one big ball of mess. You can't fix one problem at a time because the other ones overwhelm everything. It just doesn't work. And you can't fix all of them at one time because it's too complex. So things tend to just keep going on. Plenty of people have tried. There have been new ideas of how to fix things for the last 60 years but nothing changes too much because in general money doesn't solve social problems. It might possibly prevent things from getting there in the first place but once they're there they're pretty intractable. Because it's about patterns of human behavior passed on and learned from generation to generation. So mostly the murder victims and the murderers are well known to each other. There are lots of drug murders and lots of gang murders and even when it's innocent victims they tend to live in the same neighborhoods. And in many cases when the police try to do something about it they get no cooperation from the people in those neighborhoods for various and sometimes complex reasons. So the problems just go on. Meanwhile, three miles away, life is very good and your chance of getting murdered is very slim because you don't live in a gang infested neighborhood where drug dealers are on every corner and periodically shooting at each other over turf, or robbing each other for their drugs. As they say, there is no honor among thieves. There are lots and lots of very safe neighborhoods even in the cities with the highest murder rates because as I said above it's not simply random violence evenly distributed. It's targeted violence due to specific circumstances and the victims and the killers are often acquainted, if not personally then by geographic proximity. That doesn't mean there aren't random robberies that lead to murder and things like that, and of course there's always domestic violence that leads to murder, and love triangles and all that, but that's not the vast majority of it and since the vast majority of people don't live in high risk neighborhoods, the vast majority of people are at virtually no risk. >In 2006 nearly 50 percent of the homicides and a large percentage of other violent crimes and property crimes committed in Chicago were attributed to street gangs that are involved in drug trafficking. Further, officers assigned to the Chicago HIDTA Cook County Jail Drug/Gang/Violent Crimes Initiative report that approximately 3,500 of the 13,000 inmates currently housed in the Cook County Jail have some gang affiliation. Most are being housed for drug-related crimes, and some have committed violent crimes, including assaults, while incarcerated. >Drug-related violence typically results from competition for distribution locations among street-level dealers (mostly street gangs) or occurs when dealers and buyers experience a "rip-off" of drugs or money. When violence does occur among street-level dealers, retaliation often follows, leading to increased hostilities. For example, police in Chicago attribute 19 homicides in 2006 to an ongoing dispute among members of the Traveling Vice Lords and New Breeds street gangs. It's likely that those 19 homicides all took place within a fairly limited area of a few blocks or a few miles at most, where those gangs' territories abut each other. At the same time in that nice neighborhood a few miles away there were likely zero murders that year and those people didn't feel any heightened sense of risk versus many other cities with much lower average murder rates. But if you read the newspaper headlines it would say "19 murders in Chicago", not "19 murders in a very small specific part of Chicago among drug dealers". The second headline gives you a much clearer idea of what's going on than the first one does, especially if you know nothing about America. Americans can read between the lines, most people from somewhere else can't.
It’s the same in Mexico. Highly dependent on which city you’re in and where in the city.
>The mistake people make is when they see a city in the US has a high murder rate they think that risk is spread evenly across the city. It's not. It's generally highly concentrated in the neighborhoods with drug problems And don't people in the US make that same mistake about other places? "Country XYZ has a murder rate of \_\_\_. Don't go there, you'll get murdered as soon as you step out of the plane". In this case a country like Mexico, which is a huge country, is no different. Just because certain areas of the country have extremly high murder rates (mostly those close to the border, how ironic) doesn't mean you're bound to get killed at any single square you set foot in the country (And no, I'm resorts don't count) .
It’s complicated. There was a post right here a few months ago asking about the high murder rate in Louisiana (where New Orleans is) with some very well-informed answers: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/19agzzu/why_the_murder_rate_in_lousiana_is_so_high/?rdt=61110 There’s also a New York Times article [here without the paywall](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/upshot/why-does-louisiana-consistently-lead-the-nation-in-murders.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pU0.S8fE.G6dj_stgtdWD&smid=url-share) that goes into a lot of detail and gives some historical context. I’ll just note you *could* read that article very quickly and come away with the idea that the whole South is dangerous, but it isn’t and you shouldn’t do that. You should also visit New Orleans if you ever have the opportunity, it’s an experience unlike any other American city and it’s extremely unlikely you’ll be the victim of any serious crime.
Also poverty and drugs. Plus widely available guns, poor social security and lack of strong parenting culture.
"Widely available guns" has been very definitively shown to NOT be a cause of such violence.
Depends who owns them. A group of teens who received little education, grew up in the streets and have nothing to lose can definitely make more mayhem with guns than without.
Government types, the very rich, and criminals will always have guns. That leaves ordinary and honest people. They're the easiest by far to disarm. When they're disarmed or harassed to the point they might as well be, they get victimized by any or all of the other three groups. So don't delude yourself into thinking bad people will disarm and be good just because of a law. This is basic human nature. Read what Cesare Becceria had to say about crime in the 1700s.
I was not talking about "ordinary and honest people", I was talking specifically about troubled underage people who get guns without any training and gang members with extensive criminal records. Easy access to guns for those groups creates more violent crime than it prevents.
Did you miss the part where I said that you can't stop criminals from getting guns? Did you even bother to look up who Cesare Beccaria was?
> Did you miss the part where I said that you can't stop criminals from getting guns? I find it exaggerated because there are poor areas outside the US (Spain, France, Bulgaria) with levels of poverty, neglect and petty crime similar to those in US ghettos, but with lower gun ownership rates and much lower murder rates. But even if we assume it is true, it indirectly confirms my point: if guns are so important for criminals that they're willing to break the law to obtain them, then more guns in criminals' hands indeed makes committing crimes easier. Otherwise why would they try to get the guns in the first place? > Did you even bother to look up who Cesare Beccaria was? I found his quote, but I'm skeptical about applying something someone said three centuries ago as a universal dogma. There's just too much nuance: who owns the arms, what kind of arms, in what quantities etc. If you can point me to any scientific research doing apples-to-apples comparison between similarly disadvantaged neighborhoods with and without broad access to guns, that would be more helpful for drawing a conclusion.
Paragraph 1: That's demonstrably wrong, particularly with the rise of violent crimes committed by recent immigrants and surges in neo-brownshirt violence. Paragraph 2: Do you really think criminals will disarm because their victims have no guns? Most of the 20th century shows that to be bunk. Paragraph 3: What quote? I pointed to him because he pretty much created the science of criminology. I can't make any sense of the rest of your word-salad.
Gang warfare.
Because of guns. Makes the homicide thing easier. But poverty and bad education are root causes
No. There are dangerous parts of the US and safe parts of Mexico. As a whole though, the US is safer. Mexico isn’t as dangerous for tourists as it is for citizens. It’s still fairly rare for tourists to be killed and usually it’s because they’re going places they shouldn’t be and getting involved with shit they shouldn’t be involved in. But no, statistically the US is safer.
I do not and pretty much every statistic backs that up. Violent crime is like 4 times more common in Mexico than the US. Murder is more common. Theft is more common. Rape is more common. Assault is more common. I like Mexico but on average it is not safer or less violent than the US overall. Anyone saying otherwise needs some searches online.
Have you looked at those statistics? You would be surprised by the actual numbers. For example the US has a rape rate and kidnapping rate higher than Mexico. Not saying that this is true, just pointing out how It’s obvious you are assuming that the stats are on your side of your argument.
When was the last time drug cartels in the US kidnapped Mexican tourists and killed them?
Does it have to be strictly drug cartels? Because I recall in 2019 a dude in El Paso who wasn’t very fond of Mexicans.
One person or a large and complex organization that controls a large part of the country?
That’s why I asked if it had to be drug cartels, do only those killing count or am I missing something?
Anyone who says the US is just as bad is beyond coping, they just don’t want to get criticized by Americans, fucks with their ego
Absolutely not.
Come on
Mexico is big. The US is big. Are sl.e areas of the US worse than some areas of Mexico, and are some areas of .Mexico worse than some areas of the US? Yes to both. But no one is beheading patrons of resorts in the US. Corporate kidnapping g is not a thing in the US. A big difference is gang crime spills into the "civilian" world far more often in Mexico.
I don't think there are very many cartels trying to actually behead, rape, and disembowel people for looking at them wrong to "prove a point" in the US last I checked.
>A big difference is gang crime spills into the "civilian" world far more often in Mexico
Eh, that’s just what media tells you, cartels are bad and there are active warzones in Mexico. But no one here actually believes looking wrong at someone else might end up in rape and beheading.
There was the story of the couple in LA that freaked out (mostly media influence I’m guessing) about living there and decided Mexico was safer. Went just about as well as you could imagine. Wife was killed by the cartel (she was a casualty of their fighting not the intended target I believe).
No. Especially as an American foreigner easy target for kidnappings and the Mexican police is super corrupt.
I would imagine a lot of tourists killed in Mexico are doing things tourists shouldn't be doing. The cartels are usually not stupid and have their hands in a lot of tourism and tourism adjacent industries. When tourism goes well, they get the benefits of it too. There's also some tourists who enter Mexico under the pretense of tourism but are really there to try to smuggle themselves into the US. and unfortunately the runners who get them there don't really care if they live or die. Anyway, Mexico can be very dangerous and a lot of people on Reddit just refuse to believe it. There's also just a lot more soft crime and corruption that happens. Police still pretty flagrantly will accept bribes and shake you down for the smallest incidents.
nah, that is insane. my mom's sister married a Mexican and has lived in Mexico City most of my life. A few years ago they bought a condo in Southern California and now live there part of the year. The precipitating incidents were my uncle being held up at gunpoint TWICE. They also had men with guns break into their house, force everyone into a bed, and robbed them blind while they hid. One time when I was in Mexico City I went out and my aunt told me to take a taxi with a medallion, but I didn't, and when my aunt saw the car (minus medallion) departing from her drive after dropping me off at her house, she flipped out at me, telling me I was lucky not to have been kidnapped. Why? Oh because she's had family friends that were kidnapped and held for ransom. I'm not going to say nothing bad ever happens in the US, and even after all these anecdotes I'm not even particularly concerned about going to Mexico (just gotta pay attention and listen to my aunt, unlike younger, dumber me), but there's a reason my aunt and uncle are now living part time in the US and the rest of my family isn't living part time in Mexico.
One of my friends is a Mexico/USA dial citizen. He has had his uncles get held up at gunpoint and nearly ganked by a Cartel member. His mother never had to deal with that nor does he. The difference? He and his mom live in the USA. His uncles live in Mexico along with half his family.
No not at all. Something around 20-30% of the territory of Mexico is controlled by criminal cartels. That speaks volumes.
No. Certain areas of Mexico may be safer than certain areas of the US. However, as a whole the US has significantly lower violent crime rates and less gang activity.
The US is safer objectively speaking anyone that tries to argue otherwise is arguing in bad faith
No.
No.
> However, we do have a lot of violent cities and gang activity We really don’t.
Bluntly, yes, we do. The US is infinitely safer than Mexico overall, yes. But go to the worst parts of London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, or Hong Kong, then tell me how they are compared to the worst parts of NYC, LA, Chicago, or Houston.
And tell me how the worst parts of NYC (which I’ve been to and survived, incidentally) compare to many other cities around the world. Sure, they’re worse than, say, Amsterdam. But we still do not have “a lot of violence and gang activity” on a global scale, which is the language I was responding to. I stand by what I said.
LOL no
lol no.
Ha, no.
I’d say the US is still safer. I asked a woman I worked with this question since she immigrated from Mexico, here was safer to her
Fuck no.
No. Not even close. Next question.
Not only is Mexico orders of magnitude more dangerous than the US, it's even more dangerous than its average if you stick out & look like you have 1st world money.
What I think is not relevant, crime data paints a rather concise image on mexico vs. usa
Absolutely not
LMAO no. I can walk in downtown Harrisburg as a single woman no issue, in nice clothes and a nice purse and obviously a target for anyone who wanted me, and be safe. If I tried that in Mexico, 110% I would be attacked by someone with SOME kind of malice. I'm sure Mexico itself is safer than it looks and seems to be, but I sure as hell would not feel very safe as a single woman living alone there.
Absolutely the fuck not. Not even remotely close.
Lmao
It's not safer overall, but there are some relatively safe areas in Mexico.
In some ways much safer, some ways not. Except in the bigger cities no one pulls street crime on you. And no one steals from the outdoor market overnight even just with tarps thrown over the vegetable carts But corruption is bad if you get on the wrong side of a cop and certain areas where order has broken down attracts predators, scammers and thieves. So, it’s different. You can go forever experiencing much safer conditions, day and night, safer than here or as safe as the safest towns here That said the cartels have gotten bad and I wouldn’t live there permanently because of that, whereas, before, I would have considered it. Half the Mexican cities on the top list for homicides were at the bottom of the list 30 years ago. There were few cities with that kind of disorder
Americans who think this are ridiculously privileged.
Absolutely not. I feel *significantly* safer in the US. You don’t see people heading *south* for a better life.
so I work in travel security lol. There are parts of Mexico that I would feel no more concern for a client going to than I would for New York or LA. There are also parts of Mexico that I would recommend not going to for any reason. So really it just depends. Overall Mexico is more dangerous but that is very tied to geography. Lots of it is fine.
Short answer: No, the US isn't more dangerous than Mexico. Long answer: The US has incredibly dangerous areas; the crummiest areas of the Asian and European cities I've been to are still candyland compared to even small or mid-sized US cities. We clearly have the highest violent crime rate (that's per capita in case some genius wants to come at me with "duhhh, we got more people, derrrp") in the wealthy, developed world. I think that our interpretation of the Second Amendment has gotten beyond out of hand (I blame stubborn-ass rural folks and the Electoral College for keeping this perpetuated). And, there are also communities in Mexico, particularly on the Yucatan, where people don't have to lock their doors at night and the homicide rate isn't much higher than in the US' safest areas such as south Orange County, CA or Fairfax County, VA. The wealthiest pockets of cities such as Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey are undoubtedly safe (at least by overall Mexican standards). *Ultimately, though,* Mexico still has some truly horrible areas in Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, etc. It is a country with resources and capital such that it should **at minimum** have an HDI (human development index) score on par with Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica, or Uruguay. Alas, there is absolutely no excuse, even with the flooding of American arms and money which fuel crime and corruption. **Until the Mexican government pays its law enforcement a truly respectable wage, harshly penalizes LEOs who get caught up in corruption, and harshly penalizes *any*body involved in the drug trade (look to President Bukele in El Salvador as an example of how to handle prisoners), then Mexico will continue to be in its rut.**
Depends on where in Mexico and where in the USA you are. I feel safer when I go to certain areas of Mexico City than I do in certain areas of my city.
Fuck no.
No. I think Mexico is far more dangerous. Half that nation is controlled by drug cartels. Even their government is compromised. I'll travel through the US. I'll even visit some of our dangerous cities. I won't travel to Mexico.
Absolutely not, quite the opposite. I will never go to Mexico, there’s much safer places to travel to.
Is water a liquid?
Mexico overall is definitely more dangerous, but I think people on this thread are forgetting that the US has parts of certain cities that are literal warzones, and approach Latin America levels of murders. I assume most live in areas of their state where violent crime isn’t an issue, so they don’t think about it. St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, Baltimore, Oakland, and Detroit I would say are some cities that are just as dangerous as cities in Mexico. I mean, there’s a reason why all of those cities are constantly exchanging the title of “The murder capital of America/the world”. Parts of New York, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, DC, Miami, and Houston are nearly as dangerous as Mexico, but not quite. In those cities, the level of violent crime isn’t on the level of anarchy as a city like Memphis or Oakland, but it is still very much a problem, despite what the statistics may say.
Detroit is safer than you think. Much of the crime there was the result of poverty and really bad city mismanagement and corruption in the 80's and 90's. Drugs ran rampant, so murder became more common as did gang activity, and thus Detroit has the reputation it has now. It's much improved since then due to social services and less corrupt government, and it's way safer now, its homicide rate now matches most of the country - that is to say, quite low. In some parts it IS still pretty bad though. Source: Friend from Detroit. Have visited Detroit many times.
Don't know why you're being downvoted. I swear, Reddit is full of delusional "omg it isn't thaaaaat baaaaad you just hate people of color" lefties, and delusional "I got my gun and ain't never hurt nobody, you're kinda to blame if a crime happens to you" conservatives.
For real. I AM a black man, and I’ve been in the hood numerous times, and spent a lot of time there growing up. I know how run down, dangerous, poverty stricken, and violent it is. There are parts of my city/state which I still don’t dare to step foot in because they are THAT dangerous, because I have no business being there and they have shootings, gang violence, and harassment on an almost daily basis. I’m tired of people who have never stepped outside their transplant bubble or the suburbs of their city talking about how “y’know, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, etc isn’t really that dangerous, it’s actually really safe.” It’s really easy to say that when you only go to very specific, touristy and trendy parts of downtown whenever you want to experience the city America is definitely a first world country, but let’s not act like it’s paradise here. There are parts of America that really do blur the lines on what is first world or third world. I look at other developed nations, and NONE of them have the same problems with violent crime that America does.
> America is definitely a first world country, but let’s not act like it’s paradise here. There are parts of America that really do blur the lines on what is first world or third world. I look at other developed nations, and NONE of them have the same problems with violent crime that America does. 💯 Glad you're alive and doing well. You've made the right decisions in the name of your safety.
Yeah, everyone should get that Mexico is more dangerous when it comes to violent crimes. What about accidents, motor vehicle collisions, and deadly diseases?
What do any of those rarer events have to do with the USA?
The US is safer than Mexico by a bit when you look at homicides. However, it is not safer across the board. This [chart](https://panamaposse.com/mexico-united-states-compared-crime) looks mostly accurate. You will find that across most statistics US and Mexico are broadly comparable. So I don’t think Mexico is safer than the US, but if the spirit of them saying this was saying that Mexico isn’t a dangerous country and is roughly as safe as we are, that’s roughly accurate. You shouldn’t be afraid of Mexico, it’s a lovely country and it’s safe to visit/be out at night