There's No Such Thing As An "American" Homicide Rate

In September, the FBI released new homicide data, and the overall US homicide rate rose for the second year to an eight-year high.

According to the report, the nationwide homicide rate in the US in 2016 was 5.3 per 100,000, up from 2015's rate of 4.9.

The homicide rate in 2014 - 4.4 per 100,000 - had been a 51-year low, and comparable to rates not seen since the 1950s.

Homicide rates still remain well below where they were in the 1980s and 1990s, when homicide rates sometimes exceeded 9 per 100,000.

When it comes to making any serious analysis, however, nationwide homicide rates for a place as large as the United States arenext to useless. When we look at numbers on a state-by-state basis, we find that homicide rates vary from 1.3 per 100,000 in New Hampshire to 11.8 per 100,000 in Louisiana.

To offer some additional context, I've included rates from Canadian provinces (using Canada's 2015 stats) side by side with US states:

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