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Old West homicide rates
An interesting historical discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy.
3 Comments | Leave a comment
OF course they did not have the trauma units, emt's etc. That we have today.
Now a-days you can get shot up pretty good & still make a full recovery
With today's violent Assault rate (which is under reported) at around 40/100,000 & the Homoicide rate at 6.5-7.0 per 100,000, I don't see that we are any less violent, we just have better medicine, & kevlar.
When I read "old-West homicide rates", I was wondering about comparisons between Dodge City and Chicago during the late 1800's.
It looks at California instead, which is "West", but not the "West" of cowboys and cattle-rustlers.
But I wouldn't be surprised if L.A. had worse murder rates than Dodge City.
The problem is, these studies can't control for demographic factors. For instance, in Philadelphia, your odds of being murdered if you're a University of Pennsylvania professors are pretty damned low. The odds of being murdered if you live 10 blocks west of UPenn and are selling drugs on the street corner, are particularly high. They even out to a murder rate for the whole city, but ignoring demographics, it's hard to say what your particular risk is.