White Supremacists Suck At Math
I'm getting more than a little tired of listening to conservatives talk endlessly about how violent Chicago is. The thing is, I've actually clicked on the conservative links with stories about how violent Chicago is, and their evidence for Chicago being unusually violent is always based on murder totals. Conservative sources about violence in Chicago (at least the ones that I have read) never actually mention the murder rate.
The fact that no one makes this distinction in the right-wing safe-space media indicates to me that this probably originated with white supremacists rather than "normie" conservatives because the argument is unusually dumb and ignores basic arithmetic. White supremacists (and conservatives in general) do not appreciate the difference between a murder total and a murder rate because elementary school arithmetic is frankly beyond them.
I've argued with every kind of conservative from libertarians to Evangelicals to white supremacists, and in my opinion, white supremacists are far and away the dumbest of all conservatives. What's hilarious is that they believe they are smarter than the other conservatives because they hide among them without the other conservatives noticing their presence. To me, this isn't evidence of the relatively larger intellect of white supremacists. I've argued with them, and they are definitely dumber than the "normie" conservatives. The fact that they are able to hide among the other conservatives without the other conservatives noticing is evidence of their dishonesty relative to other conservatives (and perhaps the gullibility of libertarians and Evangelicals), not their intellect.
Chicago has high murder totals because it has a large population. No matter what the murder rate is, there is always going to be a large murder total. Chicago is one of the most populous cities in America, so the fact that all of those right-wing safe-space media articles talk about murder totals and never murder rates should have been a giant red flag for anyone who managed to pass elementary school.
Murder Rate by City
Mind you, when I say "Chicago is not that violent," I readily acknowledge that it's pretty darned violent. According to World Population Review, Chicago is the city with the 10th highest murder rate among American cities. That's still pretty violent, but from the hyperventilating, hand-wringing articles about Chicago violence from the right-wing safe-space media, you would think it was number 1 for certain.
From the above article:
St. Louis, MO (69.4)
Baltimore, MD (51.1)
New Orleans, LA (40.6)
Detroit, MI (39.7)
Cleveland, OH (33.7)
Las Vegas, NV (31.4)
Kansas City, MO (31.2)
Memphis, TN (27.1)
Newark, NJ (25.6)
Chicago, IL (24)
Cincinnati, OH (23.8)
Philadelphia, PA (20.2)
Milwaukee, WI (20.0)
Tulsa, OK (18.6)
Pittsburgh, PA (18.4)
Indianapolis, IN (17.7)
Louisville, KY (17.5)
Oakland, CA (17.1)
Washington D.C. (17.0)
Atlanta, GA (16.7)
That's less than half of the murder rate of the number two city Baltimore, a city that never seems to get mentioned in all those breathless "Chicago is so violent" stories from the right-wing media.
Murder Rate by County
This still doesn't tell us the whole story. If we compare the cities that have the highest murder rate, then our list is not going to include any rural areas, and that's a pretty glaring omission. If we want to compare apples to apples and fairly compare big cities with rural areas, then we want to list counties by murder rate, not cities by murder rate. This article is from 2017, but in my (admittedly cursory) Google search, I didn't find any lists of murder rates by county more recent than that.
Let's look at the list of the 10 most murderous counties. Again, I'll list murders per 100,000 people.
Orleans Parish, Louisiana (43)
Coahoma County, Mississippi (37) (rural)
Phillips County, Arkansas (34) (rural)
St. Louis City, Missouri (33); Baltimore City, Maryland (33) (tie)
Petersburg City, Virginia (32)
Macon County, Alabama (27) (rural); District of Columbia (27) (tie)
Washington County, Mississippi (25) (rural); Dallas County, Alabama (25) (rural)
While there are some big cities on that list, 5 out of the top 10 most violent counties are rural counties. Three of those are either cities that are also counties (or not part of a county, or not part of a state in the case of DC). Some are blue cities in red states, but only one of those counties is in a blue state. The rest of those counties are either blue counties in red states or red counties in red states.
Again, this is from 2017. Since then, multiple red states have further relaxed gun laws, so no doubt a number of red states have shifted up the list.
What you really should notice is that Cook County (the county that contains Chicago) is nowhere on that list of the top ten most violent counties.
Murder Rate by State
Now let's look at the murder rate by state. This data is from 2022 (and is thus incomplete, but the most current). Again, I'll list murders per 100,000 people.
Louisiana (12.4)
Missouri (9.8)
Nevada (9.1)
Maryland (9)
Arkansas (8.4)
Alaska (8.4)
Alabama (8.3)
Mississippi (8.2)
Illinois (7.8)
South Carolina (7.8)
This time, Illinois is in the top 10, and it is likely that the murder rate in Chicago contributes significantly to Illinois being in the top 10. What you should notice is that red states are overwhelmingly overrepresented in the top ten most murderous states.
Conclusion
Again, I want to stress that Chicago is indeed violent, it's just nowhere near as violent as the right-wing safe-space media tries to make it sound. By murder rate, Chicago is the tenth most murderous city. If we look at the top ten most murderous counties (which allows us to compare rural areas with big cities), we see that half of the most murderous counties are rural counties that don't have any big cities in them, and further, Chicago's Cook County is not even in the top 10. If we list states by murder rate, Illinois is indeed #9 on the list, but the overwhelming majority of the states in the top ten are Republican.
Again, anyone who passed elementary school should have noticed that all of those hyperventilating articles about how violent Chicago is talked about the murder total without mentioning the murder rate. This should have been a red flag for everyone. Yes, Chicago is violent. Yes, Chicago has a high murder rate. But it's just not that violent. It's not as violent as those articles from the right-wing safe-space media would have you believe.