Coulter: “If you compare white populations, we have the same murder rate as Belgium”

1/15/2013 7:18pm by 107

“If you compare white populations, we have the same murder rate as Belgium” – Ann Coulter.

Media Matters spotted Ann Coulter expressing this particular nugget of the pseudo-scientific racism for which Coulter is known. But they didn’t provide a link to figures to disprove it. So I thought I would track them down and the result is rather surprising.

In a nutshell: Coulter is right, about Belgium — and only Belgium – but wrong about the rest of western Europe, which has a lot lower murder rate than even our “white” murder rate (see figures below).  So if Ann Coulter wants to play the race-baiting game, perhaps she can explain to us why white Americans are so much more murderous than western Europeans, who are also mostly white.  Hint: It’s their guns.

The only DoJ study on homicide by race that I can find is from 2005. Figures for the homicide rate in Belgium (and the rest of the world) are rather easier to come by. Guess what, when you do the math, the figures add up.

belgium fries food

Belgium frites via Shutterstock

Or to be precise, the figures add up if you happen to choose the murder rate in Belgium in 2002 when there were 318 murders there, a big jump on the 215 in 2000 and 228 in 2003. Belgium is a small country and so an extra hundred or so murders a year adds a whole percentage point to the murder rate. The average murder rate in Belgium was 2.2 per 100,000 between 2000 and 2010 and 3.1 in 2002. The US murder rate over the same period was 5.5, more than twice the rate in Belgium.

There is a strong race element in US homicides, which the DoJ report shows. Between 2000 and 2005 the average number of homicides per year committed by whites and blacks was 8,318 and 9,513, respectively. African-Americans were also much more likely to be the victim of a homicide.

Where Ann Coulter sees only race, I see race, poverty and the drug trade as potential explanations for this difference.

There is quite definitely a ‘demographic’ element to violent crime, but that isn’t enough to explain the difference between the US murder rate and the rate in Belgium (or Europe in general). The ‘whites only’ murder rate in the US is still 2.6 per 100,000, which is why Ann Coulter had to find a small country like Belgium to give the freakishly high figure she needed.

Had Ann Coulter looked at other (western) European countries, besides Belgium – the countries most like the US – she would have found a much lower overall murder rate per 100,000.  For example (and these are rough back-of-the-envelope averages over the same time period):

US ‘whites only’ murder rate: 2.6
Denamark 1.0
Ireland 1.2
Norway 0.8
Sweden 0.9
Greece 1.4
Italy 1.4
Spain 1.2
Austria 0.8
France 1.7
Germany 1.2
Switzerland 1.0

Now you know why Ann Coulter picked Belgium.  Even the US’ ‘whites only’ murder rate is two to three times the murder rate in western Europe.  So not only does Coulter’s weird comparison leave us with a big ‘so what?’, but her comparison on its face is wrong because she — and here’s a surprise — skewed the facts to her favor.

There is another better explanation for the difference between the overall murder rate in the US and Belgium: Guns.

67% of murders in the US (2003-2010) were committed using a firearm. That gives a non-firearms murder rate of 1.8 per 100,000, which is only slightly higher than the rate in the UK (1.5), which has strong gun control laws and a negligible firearm murder rate (0.1). (Belgium only reported figures for firearms murders in one year, which means it is most likely an outlier).

Looking through the UN statistics, countries with a high percentage of murders committed by firearms tend to have a low number of murders overall, and to be are awash in arms, like former members of the Yugoslav federation that underwent a number of recent wars.

Possibly the most remarkable figures in the table are those for the Solomon Islands. Despite the recent civil war, there were no homicides by firearm for the years figures are available (2004-2009). The Solomon Islands has my kind of gun control: Guns are banned absolutely and completely, with the sole exception of single shot rifles.

Ann Coulter’s claim is merely the last gasp of the gun-nut strategy of talking about anything other than guns. They have tried video games, lack of prayer-in-school, and gun free zones in schools. Having seen those fail, they wheel out Ann Coulter to beat the race drum, as only she can.

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  • Scott

    Articles like this often make me chuckle. I guess from an American perspective, those of us in Europe don’t have any firearms. We just turned them in, registered them with our Governments, and handed over WWII machine-guns. Or the restrictions are such that they are hard to come by.

    I would hope that the author at least head over and read the ‘small arms survey’ at the Graduate Institute of
    International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Obtain a copy of what i’m about to suggest. Plenty of firearms are present in Europe. Its just far more common to have unregistered firearms then legally registered ones. The obvious conclusions is that its not the prevalence of guns or a lack of availability to purchase from underground sources that result in a lower murder rate.

    Now contemplate why our murder rates are lower without considering this perpetual myth on the availability of guns. Then, you might start addressing your problem.

    • http://www.facebook.com/robbevans001 Robb Evans

      Most Americans recognize the demographic that commits 52% of the homicides despite making up only 13% of the population is the problem.

      Most Americans are just afraid to speak the truth.

      Murder rates of various regions from a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report:

      Eastern Africa——21.9/100k Africa
      Middle Africa——-20.8/100k Africa
      Southern Africa—–30.5/100k Africa
      Western Africa——15.4/100k Africa
      Caribbean———–16.9/100k Americas (large African population)

      Northern America—-3.9/100k Americas
      Eastern Europe——6.4/100k Europe
      Northern Europe—–1.5/100k Europe
      Southern Europe—–1.4/100k Europe
      Western Europe——1.0/100k Europe

      There is a pattern here and it’s not guns.

  • Tjrzz

    These numbers are misleading because the FBI statistics (which I assume is where you got the numbers) lumps Hispanics into the white murder rate. So the European white murder rate in the US is even lower than you claim here.

  • ronnie

    As a black man, I completely agree with the spirit, if not the actual numbers, of what crazy-as-guano Coulter says. it’s some weird kind of racism that talks around the problem of black violence in America. IT IS A HUGE PROBLEM. Most of the victims of this violence are other blacks. Yet, every time the gun debate comes up, it’s treated as though it’s a problem of hillbillies. This allows the problem to go unresolved. This subterfuge wrecks any chance of an honest discussion. If you want black-on-black crime to continue keep mischaracterizing this problem… Why do liberal approaches to black problems have such harmful consequences?

    • Conor McCartney

      that one is simple. Democrats rely on the black vote, so the best way to do that is by making republicans all look racist, so democrats don’t want to ever say anything tough or harsh about blacks lest they risk offending a rock solid voting base. As a result there is no reflection on issues such as valuing education, or black on black crime.

  • http://www.facebook.com/villar777 JC Villar

    The murder rate has nothing to do with the gun issue. The issue is liberty. The Constitution doesn’t guarantee anyone a right to be safe, it guarantees a right to be free. If you want to be safe, pack your crap, move to North Korea and find yourself a nice rice paddy to work in tepid and muddy waters up to your thighs for the remainder of your uneventful life. As long as you keep your mouth shut and cry hysterically at state funerals, nothing bad will ever happen to you. Maybe.

  • DD

    At face value her comments are correct, but may I remind everyone there are blacks in Europe as well. I would love to see the numbers for black population in those countries. I guess Ann Coulter is saying that minorities should be banned from having guns essentially taking away their rights as a throw back to the Reconstruction and Jim Crow South, too bad it’s almost always the white person that goes on massive shooting sprees. At least without guns lynch mobs can become popular again.

  • http://cofcc.org/ Kyle Rogers

    The author has made a serious error. The rate of 2.6 includes all white and Latinos. Latinos commit murder at a much higher rate than white Americans. This drive the score up. The Feds count all Latinos as “white” in offender data.

  • BeansNRice

    Total Europe, which includes Russia, has had a higher murder rate with guns i the past decade than the US. Nobody brings this up. But this isn’t the point. Where these murders happen matters. Yes, UK has a low gun murder rate….so does Scarsdale NY. So does Iowa. But check out the numbers in your local hood…they are off the charts. So when we cherry pick UK out of Europe, let’s do the same here…..let’s target the hood where the vast majority of the gun violence exists. And for you racists out there, the hood can be just as white as black. In fact, most poor are white in the US. So there.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Smith/509833617 Bill Smith

    The fact is that blacks commit more violent crime in countries all over the world… Quit blaming the messenger… The fact is, their are more whites total, living in poverty in the US, the white murder rate should dwarf that of blacks.. Asian immigrants excel all over the world, as do brown people from other countries.. Blacks have higher rates of violence EVERYWHERE! Blacks have murdered Thousands of whites in South Africa in the past 20 years.. The country has gone to hell in that same time that blacks have been in power in the government.. Similar to cities in the US with black mayors and city councilmen.. Integrated black students in the suburbs do not show better graduation rates than their inner city counterparts. Half of all black males drop out of high school. The majority of their adults behave like juveniles, and have behavioral self control in public places.. Although their are exceptions, the evidence backs up the fact that blacks average much lower IQ.. It is absurd to expect populations of people separated by oceans for thousands of years, to have brains and bodies that have evolved at the same rate. It is OK to describe blacks as better athletes than everyone else, but not to question if their intelligence is lower!? Why are they better athletes?? Maybe because their bodies evolved differently? Evidence to Africans having lower IQ’s would be, that Africans were living in the stone age when whites arrived in Africa, and many still live that way today.. They hadn’t created a written language, and in most areas, the vocabulary only consisted of hundreds of words, where the English language is now sitting at a million. Historical writings from men who explored Africa, question how Africans had not learned to harness the wind and water with boats… They were surprised that with such large animals, they had not yet harnessed these beasts to aid in agriculture.. There was not much of a sign of agriculture.. Africans lived day to day, without any concept of future, much like they still do..

  • Mike

    Plain wrong. The blogger here does not realize that the White crime rate INCLUDES HISPANICS. If you remove the Hispanic crime rate, you easily put American white crime rate in the range of the European countries. Of course it would be insane for me to assume the blogger here would retract this article or admit this very obvious mistake.

  • Bruce D

    The “white ” U.S. murder rate includes Hispanics who have a very high murder rate. Unfortunately, the FBI doesn’t track homicide offenders by ethnicity like it dies by race. If we consider only non-Hispanic whites, the U.S. white murder rate is likely below all the gun-control nations.

  • http://twitter.com/FredNOLA Fred

    Finland is 2.2, but she is off saying it is the same as Europe, I agree. That being said, you still can’t deny the drastic drop in the murder per capita rate if you only take whites. It does show there is a problem and I know you don’t want to post the black murder rate if you pull all whites and Hispanics out of the USA. We have a problem in this country and it is genocide of black on black crime. I hope at some point that people acknowledge this problem and we work on a viable solution because it is sad to see so many of them die every year. Do I have the answer, no? The blacks in the US kill each other off at the same rates as we see in many African countries. It is very tragic. We have to stop denying the problem and get our greatest minds together to try and fix it.

  • Tagg

    If it’s about guns then why does Russia have a murder rate 4X that of the US and virtually no guns?

  • George Rivas

    Well, if Ann Coulter is being selective in choosing Belgium you are being even more selective in ignoring most of the rest of the world. ALmost all eastern europe, russia, africa, south america, central america, and much of asia has a higher murder rate than the us average — not to mention the white-only average. I guess you are a strong believer in American Exeptionalism and need the USA to be better than everybody at everything.

    Oh, btw, the USA has more guns in private hands than the rest of the (oppressed) world combined. So comparing deaths by guns is pretty pointless… did you have a point?

    While I agree that causality is aligned with poverty and drugs it seems, sadly, that these are also correlated with race in our country as black and hispanic populations tend to cluster in the inner city.

    If you adjust for the number and availability of guns then you’ll discover that the guns/gundeath ratio in the US is about the same as Belgium at 29000 and far better than Holland at 9000. Ignoring the number of guns when studying gun deaths is like comparing shark attack numbers between island Australia and land-locked Bolivia.

  • http://twitter.com/FredNOLA Fred

    Does US ‘whites only’ murder rate: 2.6 include suicide? If so, pull suicide out and lets have a look. It could be we have a higher suicide rate here right? I think overall studies show that europeans have a less stressful happier life. I know when I lived in Europe I had more vacation time, worked less hours, and just felt less stress and depression overall because of the lifestyle.

  • Fantom

    Incorrect, your “whites only” includes hispanics. When you remove that demographic, you get a Euro-White American rate around 0.8 or there abouts, as low as the lowest European country.

    • King Solomon

      How about we remove the Italians and Irish from that Demograhic, we’ll get the REAL Euro White AMerican Rate because those Gumbas and Gingers commit more white crimes.

      • pablo

        great point, we could compare irishmen in ireland with irish-americans, likewise with italy and italian-americans. If we do this what would we learn about the explanatory effect of the number of guns owned in the US with that in Italy or Ireland ? Seems easy enough to do that stats. Im guessing that the blogger will not want to see that data.

        • King Solomon

          Finally, I’ve met someone I can be friends with!

        • alistz

          You also have to factor in that Europeans have crappy health care. Many people who survive violence here would be dead from the lack of care.

          Until Obamacare is implemented and our health care system becomes as crappy as theirs, we can’t really compare ‘death’ rates.

          We need to be calculating ‘attempts’ .

  • Aggie95

    O.K. and here is a little nugget she fails to mention ….. hispanics are included in the White murder rate ….so riddle me this …what is the White murder rate if hispanics are excluded as well

  • http://twitter.com/ghastlygames ghastlygames

    You’re a total idiot. It’s open season on white people and you want to get rid of our guns? That’s moronic.

  • Rman

    Anyone who criticizes blacks is a racist according to the left. Blacks commit most of the murders and represent a small percentage of our population. Instead of criticizing the messenger for pointing this out, we need to deal with it. Its a fact. The more important question is why and how can we help. The destruction of the black family by poorly designed and executed welfare policies is one of the leading causes. If you do not have a father, who is the disciplinarian. Who is the person you want to emulate. The figures speak volumes about policy failures. Instead of name calling..think about how we can rebuild the black family.

  • Wildcatman

    How many people die every year due to alcohol? I have seen conservative estimates that are ten times the firearm rate. So why not ban drinking and greasy food?

    • Naja pallida

      Cue standard response: Because alcohol and foods are not created with the express intent of killing things.

      • cody jennings

        by standard response you mean logical argument you cant counter. alcohol and greasy foods also will not save your life when someone breaks into your house, nor will they provide nutrition for your family by killing a deer, and despite why you think all these things exist the fact is alcohol and greasy food kill exponentially more people than my rifle.

  • dctrknew

    There is nothing racist about reading statistics. The resulting actions you take or beliefs you hold based on the information you read may become twisted into racism, but that that would be morally unacceptable. We must treat our fellow man with dignity and respect. That said, in citing the following studies, I hope no one is offended. If you are, then it is likely because you have your own false assumptions. I would like to know what conclusion can be drawn from the Bureau of Justice statistics found at this webpage. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf (page 11) Why are minority rates of murder (24.7/100,000) so much higher than the majority (3.4/100,000)? The murder rate for “whites 3.4/100,000″ includes latinos as well, so it is reasonable to say that white-non-hispanic murder rates are even lower than 3.4. This page from the CDC shows that the white-non-hispanic murder rate is 2.7/100,000. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6001a14.htm Why do people of European ancestry commit fewer murders than people of African ancestry? I am a responsible gun owner and want to retain my second amendment constitutional right, but I realize the naivety in claiming that guns have little or no effect on the murder rate. The fact is; guns are used in war because they are an effective means towards their intended end. Baseball bats and knives could be used in war, but they generally are not. I’ll finish this long winded comment with stating my point of view. Gun sales should have a degree of oversight, yes. Some people should not own them for various reasons (psychiatric, history of violence etc.) But this discussion about homicide and guns should go much deeper. WHY do people kill others? All we are currently focused on is HOW. A band aid on a gaping wound won’t fix it. I would advise anyone who is interested in FIXING the problem to spend some time volunteering at a local Boys and Girls Club or another organization aimed at helping those in need. Our country is more segregated and scared of each other today than it was 40 years ago. Change that. —any helpful comments are appreciated.—

  • KN

    But the truth is that although whites comprise 67% of the population, Hispanics 16% and blacks, just 13%, blacks are responsible for roughly half the murders in America. The murder rate among blacks is eight times as high as among whites.

    • George Rivas

      The numbers are a little different. The WWSJ online has a “Murder in America” project with an online database and active filters. Over the past decade these are the numbers for gun deaths: 32,327 white, 15,334 hispanic, 60,028 black. So the black gun death rate is more like 6x the white. Note these numbers are victims, not shooters — because about 1/3 of the shooters race is unknown…I guess they got away.

  • Tostik

    Racism? really?!! Do you know how many times I’ve seen Ann Coulter called a slut in comment sections of other articles on this subject because of this statement? Left wing sexism is exposed here, not the non-existent racism of Ann Coulter.

  • NCBrian

    So let me get this straight – what she said was true, but it’s still racist?

    I certainly agree that it is a distasteful statement and, like much of what she says, lacking in tact – but if she’s right, then she’s right. She herself might or might not be a racist individual, truth be told i don’t think i’d be surprised either way, but if what she said is true, how can it be racist?

    Isn’t pretending like a correlation between race and violence doesn’t exist more racist than actually adressing it?

    I for one don’t believe that the amount of melanin in your skin makes you more or less prone to murder. So assuming i’m right about that, what’s the problem? Poverty? Culture?

    • Aggie95

      democrats … or at least I can make the case that the more democrat an area is the greater the murder rate will be ….. fact ….. don’t believe it ….well look at the areas that voted for obama then look at the number of murders in those areas

  • EnterSandman

    i still do not believe that guns should be banned and after only reading two articles on this website i feel you all are closed minded because of Americas two party system doesn’t matter if you are left wing or right wing i feel like America should have more choice on who should be running the country because frankly, i didn’t want to vote for Obama or Romney. you all think that there is only two approaches to every situation like this gun ban which i honestly believe that we shouldn’t be banning any guns from the people because it limits our freedoms, but i also believe we should take measures to keep guns out of the hands of bad people or maybe its not even the people that are bad its our way of living.

  • Guest

    I still Dont

  • rrr

    I find it hard to see how it is “psuedo-scientific.” Did someone say she had somehow done ‘science’? I don’t think many people would think it’s ‘science’. It’s not like the person is even thinking that it’s an experiment or anything; they’re just comparing how many murders and how many guns have been counted.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Neil-Kelly/100003586655632 Neil Kelly

    If one subtracts recidivism and the race element, it is clear the justice system intentionally releases dangerous people onto our streets, ignores illegal immigration, turns a blind eye toward drug cartels and then attempts to combine a white gun owner; a suburban man with a wife and kids in on the same statistic.
    I understand the DOJ and local police add hispanics into the white column. Geez, why would they do that?
    Are we ignoring some horrific murders where a gun should have been used in self defense? What about the 2.5 million times a year guns are used that way in the u.s.?
    I really don’t trust a group of people with guns who say I shouldn’t have one. I don’t even trust their stats. You shouldn’t either. When something hits the fan you’re living a fantasy if you think someone else will be responsible for your safety.

  • Troey Edwards

    If you have less guns, yes you would have less gun crime. But you aren’t comparing apples to apples here. Look at the DUI rate. Drunk Drivers kill more children and People then all gun crime combined. Yet we have the same laws, even stricter, then European countries do. Guess what? European countries have a much much lower rate of Drunk Driver fatalities.

    So both you and Ann Coulter are wrong. There is something unique about American society that disillusions youth and makes people turn to Alcohol and guns for a release of anger or an escape. In Europe, Time Wealth is viewed in higher esteem then Money Wealth.

  • becee74

    im sure belgium didn’t import slaves & have’em help build their country financially for centuries either..

    • cody jennings

      actually, yes they did, and they were also made slaves at times as well. read a history book, every culture has experiences on both sides of slavery. but keep believing whatever version of history helps you feel better.

  • George A

    Gun control advocates make the case for guns causing murder by comparing raw numbers showing firearm deaths in the US that are hundreds of times that in Europe, not the 2 or 3 times you apparently get when you compare similar ethnicities. If you think such comparisons are racist, take that up with the racists in the federal government who publish the data.

  • Corey

    so time to unarm whites

    • cody jennings

      the word is disarm….try it

  • melbach007

    My question would be what is the difference in the numbers of the black vs white Belgian population.

  • http://www.facebook.com/darr.sandberg Darr Sandberg

    This: “Where Ann Coulter sees only race, I see race, poverty and the drug trade as potential explanations for this difference.” is the most important point in your essay, in my opinion.

    For issue after issue, being marginalized and oppressed correlates strongly with negatives like violence, addition and substance abuse, HIV infection rates, etc – yet conservative professional liars consistently rape the data to promote their particular prejudices.

    Why? Because they are the oppressors, or work for them, and therefore profit from blaming the effects of oppression and marginalization on the marginalized and oppressed as people.

    • Aggie95

      ah yes the old poverty causes crime argument ….well has poverty been up over the last 5 – 6 years …. if your answer is yes then can you please explain why it is there has been a drop across nearly all crime catogories over that same time frame ….and over the last 20 years the murder rate has been reduced by 50 %

      • Deven W

        Crime has gone down with technology. It is much harder to get away with a crime today, or at least there is the perception of that. Poverty is still a great indicator of violence. Welfare is a great indicator of violence. Also, growing up in a fatherless home is a great indicator of violence.

        Ultimately, it is a culture issue.

        Of course the same argument you just made could be used in favor of putting MORE guns on the streets. Crime rate has gone down while the number of firearms has gone up drastically over the last 20 years.

    • cody jennings

      there are way more poor whites than poor blacks so shouldn’t the number of white murders be proportionally higher as well if poverty causes murder?

  • Kat

    Great coverage.

    See more reasons why her comments are offensive at visualocracy.com .

    • MyrddinWilt

      They go a little further into the figures. Age is certainly a big factor, the white population is somewhat older and most murders are committed by young males. If you adjust for poverty and age and geography, the race element probably disappears completely.

      But that starts to over-analyze the bigoted witch. If you apply the same set of adjustments to Belgium, the figures change there as well. And when you compare like with like the US non-firearm murder rate is pretty much the same as the European and the firearm murder rate is about a hundred times bigger.

      The original purpose of the second amendment was to protect the right of the state of Virginia to maintain its slave patrols. It was not there to protect freedom, it was to protect slavery.

      • rrr

        What happens if you compare the firearm murder rate in the US and a country with many guns like Switzerland after making adjustments?

        Are you sure it was for militias doing slave patrols? I thought the 2nd amendment had more to do with ensuring people would be able to overthrow a government that was tyrannical like the people of the colonies did with the British government.

        http://www.theroot.com/views/2nd-amendment-passed-protect-slavery-no

      • Aggie95

        no it doesn’t

  • SkippyFlipjack

    I think it’s an interesting exercise to explore these numbers — and great to find that Coulter was cherry-picking her cherry-picked data — but in argument terms I think doing so accepts somewhat her position that it’s acceptable to subdivide murder victims by race. It’s like Romney after the election, acting like he should have won outright because he won the white middle-income-and-above vote. Do black murder victims not count? Does Ana Greene, age 6, not count as a victim of Newtown because she was black? The proper response to Coulter is simply “What the f*** is wrong with you?”

    • Aggie95

      LOL cherry picking …well I guess maybe but was what she said the truth

      • SkippyFlipjack

        then it wasn’t the Truth. you get that, right?

        • NoMObama

          You are an idiot. The murder rate can’t be compared to the presidential election because there is no winner to the murder rate. I don’t even like Romney but it is a fact that more wealthy white people voted for him, just like it is a fact that the murder rate among black men is 8 times that of the rest of the country. So you are just plain wrong and you’re using self-serving comparisons to make your opinion seem factually based, which it is not. You get that right?

          • SkippyFlipjack

            Anyone who starts a post with “You are an idiot” gets no reply. Sorry your parents didn’t bring you up better.

    • cody jennings

      everybody cherrypicks their data to strengthen their arguments. that said no matter how you paint it there is a serious murder problem in the black community. i believe the correlation lies with the breakdown of the black family over the past 50 years

  • http://www.facebook.com/lindsay.hirsch.94 Lindsay Hirsch

    Coulter wouldn’t recognize truth if it jumped up and bit him on his left (silicone implant) tit…

    • Sharon B

      Thanks for elevating this discussion by bringing your misogyny into it.

      • Fiona Lynn

        Perhaps Lindsay is a woman? I have heard that Ann’s real name is Arthur Coltrane. But it could just be a rumor.

    • Aggie95

      so she’s right but still a Liar ….Odd

      In a nutshell: Coulter is right, about Belgium — and only Belgium

  • Hue-Man

    When someone starts talking about race in this context or others, my response is “So what?” Is she saying to ban all non-whites from owning guns (cue Groucho Marx paraphrase: “Can my half-white daughter own a BB gun?”) or round up all non-whites and ship them offshore? It’s the same maddening bait-and-switch – let’s talk about gun control but first let’s talk about race.

    It’s made even more idiotic because it assumes that Belgium is 100% white. Wiki says 12.9% of Belgians were foreign-born of which half outside the EU. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium#Demographics

    • alistz

      If Gun Control is a good thing, then why would it be a bad thing if it were applied to non-whites only?
      Particularly if non-whites have higher rates of gun death and violence than whites.

  • ronbo

    Historically, income and poverty have ALWAYS been the most important factor in crime. But, we aren’t talking facts; Coulter almost always latches onto the exception.

    I sometimes wish that the left would fight fire with fire and promote … well… uh… someone (wish I knew someone on the left who was a verbal bomb-thrower). But alas, we are above fighting dirty. So we just allow this kind of nitwiticism to flourish. We don’t acknowledge, accept or tolerate anyone on the left who uses such tactics. It’s both a blessing and a curse (that ensures we are always trying to use logic with the population that doesn’t acknowledge: false logic, poor sourcing, red herrings, strawmen etc…)

    We accept the MSM argung that “both sides” do it; comparing the likes of Coulter to Barney Frank.

    • SkippyFlipjack

      They’d be a great DC odd couple wouldn’t they, a la Carville and Matalin? They’re in luck too, Frank lives in a state where he and Coulter can get gay married.

    • Chris

      So how do you explain that our family grew up poor, blatino, in a single parent household, in the South Bronx of the 70s/80s, with burnt out buildings, drugs everywhere and we all turned out fine? No criminal records for any one of us (as well as extended family growing up in the same area, similar upbringings with single parents, etc). I am tired of the Left claiming poverty and income ALWAYS causes crime and lawlessness. It’s not like we were starving and had no clothing on our backs. We had welfare, food stamps and working class jobs and none of us had to go out and kill “whitey” (or our own kind) because we were “oppressed”.

      Those that engaged in crime did it because THEY WANTED TO; no reason except to be lawless and total a-holes. I assume you are a white liberal who has never lived amongst poor minorities and are led to believe everything you hear and read from Lefties who want to punish the middle class and the rich for being successful. If I went to college, had lots of resources granted to us poor minorities to attend college and make something of ourselves, why can’t the rest of those children of single parent households do the same?! I mean, come on.

      If anyone wants to read an alternative point of view from a black, young intellectual about how the “poor” black community for the most part, chooses their bleak existence, read “Losing the Race” by John McWhorter. The Left wants to always find a boogle man: blame white folks and the “racist” government. And the Left wants well-off middle class whites to feel guilty for being successful. Well, you shouldn’t. As someone who lived in Wisconsin for years, in the poorest neighborhoods which were 99.99 percent white, I never felt unsafe as I used to growing up in the South Bronx. To deny that people of color in ghettos commit more crimes compared to their population size is denial. Those poor whites didn’t commit crimes when I was living there. Even with a meth epidemic in my area, I felt safe. I can’t say the same about my South Bronx areas I grew up in. Being poor does not equate to growing up a criminal. It sure didn’t happen to me or many of other poor families I grew up around. So enough excuses already. Now that I am back in NYC, who are the ones trying to rob me on the subways? Young people of color. Never do I fear being around a white person on a subway, ever. So are these young black/latino thugs “poor”. Not really. They have expensive sneakers I can never afford and expensive gadgets. They rob people because they are bullies and lawless and despise whitey and even worse… despise people of color like me, who actually are successful and look it. Their parents, for the most part, are working class or receive Welfare benefits. I doubt any are poor. They are not starving or forced to steal. I have seen poorer in rural Wisconsin with no threat of violence to my personhood. What an eye opener that was to me.

      Signed: a former bleeding heart liberal.

      • ronbo

        Facts have a way of driving “former bleeding heart liberals” to write long, unfocused comments. Statistically, most FBHLs don’t engage in violence. Ta Da! The magic of anecdotes.

        Add anecodes to my list above. I’m sure I missed other errors in logic. Please comment so that I can add yet another.

        • NoMObama

          And liberals have a way of completely ignoring statistics and relying on their sense of entitlement and superiority (remind you of any particular race?) and of course the appeal to people’s emotions but fail to address the logical, factual rebuttals from conservatives and instead divert to an unrelated topic to shift attention from the point they no they have no argument against.

      • Fiona Lynn

        You were never a “bleeding” heart liberal. Your long post proves it.

  • josh316

    The problem with this blog piece is that the white murder rate is over calculated You must remember that Whites and Hispanics are not differentiated when counted as offenders. This was omitted by the author

    • alistz

      Of course. Liberalism is an emotionally based belief in utopia. a liberal will never quote a number unless to distort and mislead.

  • MyrddinWilt

    One thing I hadn’t thought about till now is the fact that the gun makers might be a lot more willing to strike a deal than the NRA:

    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-15/how-obama-and-the-gun-industry-could-strike-a-deal

    The big risk for the gun industry is that the NRA are completely nuts and could easily open the door to lots of measures that hurt sales. The number of weapons bought by criminals is not big enough to rack up big profits for the gun makers, its the crooked gun dealers that want to keep background checks off the table.

    Just like the GOP has a really hard time saying no to Fox News, the gun makers are to a large degree the prisoners of their own lobbyists. The NRA probably doesn’t really have the clout it claims in Congress but its members can certainly break a gun maker in a heartbeat.

    I don’t think the stars are aligned to reinstate the assault weapons ban yet but closing the gun show loophole is certainly viable and so is banning the high capacity magazines. There is also a lot of scope to bring in controls through executive orders. For example treating an 80% lower receiver as a gun rather than as raw material, requiring the upper and lower receiver to bear serial numbers and so on.

    • Aggie95

      what gun show loop hole …. if you sell a handgun private or threw a dealer you still have to go threw a background check ….if you do not you broke the law …..rife and shotgun sales threw private owners you do not ….over 90 % of gun related murders are committed using handguns

  • Indigo

    Does Ms Culter know we’re Americans, not Belgians? Or is she so racist that all white people everywhere not only look alike but think alike and act alike and express contempt for socially responsible diversity alike? Good grief!

  • nicho

    How many mass murders does Belgium have. Most of our mass murders are from whites.

    • Naja pallida

      They’ve been known to happen. Belgium has some racial tensions, of which I bet Coulter never even considered. If we’re going to factor our homicide rate down to just white people, shouldn’t we factor theirs too?

      • josh316

        Hi, this piece should not be taken seriously. The author failed to mention that the offender category does not differentiate between White and Hispanics. Perhaps, once adjusting for this, Coulter is closer to the truth?

        • Naja pallida

          There is no truth in anything Coulter says. If she claimed the sky was blue, I would double check for a psychotic right-wing slant on what she had to say. She has absolutely nothing meaningful to contribute to the discourse. Her goal is to sell more of her hack books, so she doesn’t actually have to work for a living. Nothing more.

          • alistz

            The facts remains: Ann Coulter was simply pointing out the gun violence rates among whites are lower than among blacks.

            This blogger fails to mention that the DOJ includes Hispanic gun violence in the rate it reports for White people.

            If you adjust for Only non-hispanic whites in the stats, then that sub-group would have a murder rate approaching Irelands. Most likely, if you took the UK murder rate and adjusted that for their non-white murderers, you probably get the same murder rate as Ireland.

            You liberals are so reactionary that you can’t accept that accepting racial differences for what they are: REAL, might lead to actually solving social problems.

        • MyrddinWilt

          I did not adjust the figures to take account of the fact that black people are roughly 10% of the population either. So the ‘Whites only’ murder rate is actually a little higher since it is actually the number of murders committed per 90,000 white people.

          Since Coulter only considers people like herself properly ‘white’ we would have to remove the Asian and Latino and all the other, not properly white people from the mix we are down to 50% of the population. So the adjustments you and the other racists would insist on start to become significant and the ‘whites only’ murder rate per 100,000 white people starts to look a lot higher.

          Nice try, now go polish your jackboots somewhere.

          • josh316

            I don’t understand your response, namely the part about blacks being 10% of the U.S. population and the part about 90,000 murders per 100,000 people.

            I am not making a value statement about whom we should consider white, but an empirical statement that the statistics you cited do not differentiate between White and Hispanic Thus the white rate is inflated. I don’t know to what degree the rate is inflated, but it is inflated, and you should not be so quick to conclude what you did.

            I think Coulter is actually wrong about her Belgium statistics, btw. I think it’s obvious that guns are going to increase the murder rate.

          • Aggie95

            no they are roughly 13 % of the population

          • alistz

            You’re an insane reactionary libtard blinded by your hatred of white culture.

    • josh316

      Actually, 70% of mass murders have been committed by whites. They are underrepresented!

      • MyrddinWilt

        Top of the list of US mass murderers is George W. Bush with a body count of between 250,000 and 500,000 victims.

        Pretty obvious that the whites are going to win that contest whichever way you score it.

        • josh316

          You’re being facetious.

        • Aggie95

          actually you are incorrect ….

          the civil war was began by democrats in the South to keep the right to own black men women and children

          WW I ….. democrat president

          WW II ….democrat president

          Korea …. Democrat president

          Vietnam … Democrat president …truman sent the first troops and military aid ….kennedy and Johnston blew it all to hell and gone using the made up Gulf of Tonkin incident to drive us deeper into the war ( can you say Johnston lied and people died …. a mere 50,000 only as democrat war go not a very large number ) …NOW WHAT OTHER LITTLE PROBLEMS HAVE DEMOCRAT CAUSED …. lets see there was special order 9066 ….FDR imprisoned tens of thousands of American citizens based soley on their race …. no trial …no jury …zip ….. the only time nuclear weapons used against humans ,…. a democrat ….twice ….civilians at that ….Jim Crow …. the KKK ….. the black codes …. the poll tax ….. lynchings ….all democrat creations

        • alistz

          Since a million + people died under Bill Clinton’s food embargo of Iraq, Bush’s pro-active war therefore had the effect of saving lives.

    • alistz

      Most serial killers in America are black.

  • FunMe

    Is that crystal meth addict “mental”? Or is it the drugs she takes?

    I used to think she was being outrageous to sell books. But now I don’t know. She really is going off the deep end. It would not surprise me if she ends up like Andrew Breitbart who died on the streets of Brentwood, California after spilling out so much hate. That Coulter … what a pathetic soul!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001426939279 Carl Kerstann

    Your numbers make a stronger case for ending the war on drugs and finding a solution to poverty than they do for gun control. It seems to me that without the entrenched poverty in this country and the violence the drug trade spawns the murder rate would be pretty much the same as any other country.

    • MyrddinWilt

      That is something of a stretch.

      The US firearm homicide rate is 150 times that of the UK and so even if you take out all the drugs related murders that still leaves a lot of non drugs murders. Most of the gang murders are with a gun of course (with a few knives, clubs etc) but the typical gun murder is just like the typical non gun murder – a domestic dispute.

      Ending the war on drugs is important for other reasons. But the flip side is that quite a lot of murderers are on drugs when they kill and legalizing the drugs is not likely to help there.

      Almost all the UK firearms homicide rate is due to drug violence which is hardly a surprise because owning a handgun of any type is illegal unless you have a very specific justification.

    • http://twitter.com/FredNOLA Fred

      I am not sure if poverty is the problem, and if it is what do we do? Do we take money and spread it out so everyone has an equal share? I do believe that education is the problem, Yale studies have proven a link between violent crime and lack of education. I think we could start there, but how do you make the children learn that don’t want to?

  • cole3244

    i wondered how long it would take ann coulter to get to the race card, it took longer than i thought to be honest with you, but thanks ann you didn’t disappoint me afterall, i knew i could depend on a rw hater like you.

    • http://adgitadiaries.com/ karmanot

      Why does she even have a platform?

      • MyrddinWilt

        Because Rupert Murdoch is just as bigoted as she is?

      • http://twitter.com/FredNOLA Fred

        Free speech. Everyone should have a platform. I don’t believe in censoring people I don’t agree with.

    • rmthunter

      She was waiting for someone to pay her for saying it.

  • drdick52

    To support your point, there are these studies by the Harvard School of Public Health showing that across countries and across state in the US, more guns equals more homicide.

    http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/

    • MyrddinWilt

      The linked spreadsheets of UN stats have an endless series of rebuttals of NRA talking points.

      They love to go on about how Switzerland has a really low murder rate despite being awash in arms as every male has to be in the army. What they don’t mention is that firearms were used in 72% of the murders in the last year that they provided stats for, an even higher proportion than in the US.

      What did rather shock me was that the US non firearms murder rate looks pretty similar to the European rate. US citizens do kill with knives and poison but at pretty much the same rate as in European countries. Its not hard to see why: killing with a gun is really easy, just pull a trigger. Other methods are much harder and require a considerable degree of proximity and involve a much higher risk of being caught.

      • http://www.facebook.com/randyariddle Randy Riddle

        There’s another way to look at it: guns are an easy way to kill and they’re a weapon of opportunity. They’re more convenient for killing than poison, physical violence or weapons like a knife. One could argue that gun control reduces _opportunity_ killings – personal conflicts or anger that result in a quick reach for a gun or extending easy killing to larger parts of the drug trade that might otherwise not have access to a quick way to kill.

        • MyrddinWilt

          That is certainly true of suicides.

      • alistz

        And of course since socialized health care sucks so bad, many people in Europe die from poor car where we Americans get them into a hospital and save them.

        Obamacare should make our death rate for murder get even higher

    • George A

      Epidemiology is tricky. The reason for a correlation between gun deaths and gun ownership may also be that people in high crime areas are more likely to purchase firearms for defense.

      • NCBrian

        not to mention the fact that they’re including all gun deaths in those numbers. Alaska has the highest rate of gun deaths in the nation – at a staggering 20+ people per 100k. what they don’t often mention is the fact that 72% of those deaths are suicides.

      • The_Anticommunist_Columnist

        Exactly. One problem with the whole guns equal murder argument is that the numbers tend to be flipped. Whites own more guns but commit fewer murders per capita than Blacks. Urbsn areas have less guns but more murders per capita than rural areas.

        I wouldn’t blame race for these disparities but what you certainly cannot do is blame the guns…

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