Death statistics may vary from country to country due to:
1-Documentation or Classification practices involving the dissapearance of some one or the witness of their death being different. [example; according to the history channel, it is well known that "red china" hid the numbers of people they had killed to gain power and destroyed records of many people even existing. Of course this was a war, but if the government then falls appart... then who documents deaths, and how do we know they aren't recounting the same death more than once, or not counting a death at all, with out some sort of official international system that is databased every year?]
2-Greed influencing people who are allready at will to beat some one to be correct also willing to murder some one for their money. [example; the bully's at school who "beat kids for lunch money" (I say this in reference to any child who beats an other to get their way) may become the 'adults' who cannot take no for an answer and end up hurting or killing people if they don't get their way (intentionally or not) in the working world or in their domestic life.]
3-A mixture of several different social classes and belief systems which varies depending on the age of the person and the education they recieved, as well as how strong the parents keep their values with their children. [example; middle class catholic schooled woman compared to a lower class ghetto schooled woman. There is an obvious difference in the way situations are dealt with there. For years and years the ancestors of our now African-USA populace in the ghettos of LA were beaten by slave drivers and slave masters, and it is possible that they they then used the same tactics to teach their children to behave. On the flip side, we have many Mexican-USA ghettos filled with family units which revolve around trying to fit in with the religious values of the local churches. These people often get drunk beyond belief but I have yet to see them clobber their children. Children of these areas are often mixed with children of other poor areas who follow the beating ways. Children inter mix and the new generation is a little more willing to start a fight just because the other group is different. I have witnessed these things ever since I was born. A lot of the problems with child violence do, believe it or not, happen due to a racial difference. Strangely I found that most children are not punished for starting a fight, but for finishing a fight. The ones who finish the fight are sent to the detention and they then [usually] get on a track to a worse off state of being. It's sad, but I saw it happen to some of my aquaintances in middle school. That brings up an other point, children in middle school are the most segregated acting age group I can think of (mostly because children from several different schools are merging in to one, and education barriers once again cause the masses of each group to assume that 'looking one way means you are that way' even if the child in question is a smart one from a better education environment) and they are never forced to be broken up. If you look in to a Middle school quad any where in northern california (well.. I have seen berkely [which I think just goes from Eschool to Hschool], 2 napa ms's, richmond, santa rosa, fairfield, and who knows how many others) school you will see they are all self segregated based on how they are dressed and how they physically appear to look to one an other. They are not forced to work together, and only the highly educated and the 'nerdy kids' are not part of the rediculous groupings. It's a tough cookie to break and not many high schoolers I have seen appear to be breaking it. I think that we will continue to have problems from this are because of the inability to educate every one to the best of our ability and the inability to blend the castes of people at school with out causing a major education fault or difficulty to the highest and lowest educated children.] -This is the one evil seemed to be leaning on, and as I have grown up here and visited many areas during and after school I can say that I have witnessed this from experience. It's sad, but it's the way it this country educates it's youth. :-/
4-Media portrayal of a "normal" persons life. This can heavily influence how a teen will dress, what they wille at and drink, and what words they will use to communicate. [example; my brothers both made fun of and said "those sagging pants are hella lame!" but when their skating idols began to sag lower and lower and wear baggier and baggier pants, so did my brothers and all of their scating friends. When the bare-legged shorts phase of skating clothes of the 80's died out, my brothers changed with the flow to the next "coolest" style, and a long with it, skate videos and a long with that, jackass-style humor and language. (though as children we had already performed a lot of the stupid crap on jack ass, before that show was even a concieved idea. that reminds me, when jackass came out we all said 'wow, that's like what we used to do!' and then we did more stupid crap like the snow saucer behind the truck, or the easy chair pulled behind the truck, etc...) I was in 8th grade when the beavis and butthead thing hit hardest in my area and it was beyond lame how many people talked like they didn't know more than 8 words. Why did they do it? I am guessing they saw that and thought it was cool, so they did it too.] -This area of discussion goes on in thousands of unique ways, some getting in to the influence of media on how peope handle weapons [for example; tv shows and movies allllmost always portray a gun handler with their finger on the trigger, even when they are just holding the weapon in a 'buying a gun' scene. This is god damned dangerous, and grounds for being kicked off of the local gun range. If the media portrayed that the finger is off the trigger in a straightened position as it should be, perhaps there would be less accidental gun death. We don't know for certain, but it does seem reasonable that because average children pay attention to the tiniest details in race cars that they would possibly pay the attention to the tiniest detail in handling a gun on tv.] -As for the killing aspect, you can search deep and find many things. A common one I have heard from 'gangster' or 'ex-gangster' men is that they would rather be the one shooting than getting shot, and thus lay down a barrage of fire rather than play it cool. kinda sad.
5-Lack of fear of punishment and the old "killing in the heat of passion" idea, or the "I was temporarily insane at the time because Satan told me to" or other such excuse often used to cover some ass. It reminds me oh so well of the "I never thought it would happen to me" saying I always hear concearning people doing really idiotic stuff. If I ever have a friend that does some drug and then does some thing because of the drug making them have less control and either blames the drug or uses the "never thought it would happen to me" phrase... I will lose my respect for them. It's bullmalarkey because every one has control over their life, many just choose to be controlled by their emotions or by others, and control of ones life starts by not doing the drug to begin with. (side rant, sorry.) By all means they have the right to do what they will, but they should think abot the consequence first. This brings me back to this number, the lack of thinking of the consequence or lack of fear of the consequence.
6-The thought structure of the people in a society ultimately governs the mass of what happens. [for example; If most people think killing for money is wrong and think that telling others that it is will change the people who would kill for money's mind, but it doesn't, then you will still have the problem of the people who will kill for money.]
7-The laws involved in regulating people. Many people in this country break laws every day, even laws they voted in to power. If the people who make the laws (or at least a huuuuge portion) don't enforce them, then people will continue to break them. Enforcing is some thing all citizens have to do to maintain a steady society. If people are not taught the correct from the incorrect, then we cannot expect them to act accordingly. If the people who follow the rules do not do some thing to change the people who don't follow the rules, then rules will continue to be broken. As a society lives all of its members need to retain and enforce the same values (this means every one, not just police) in order for those values to have meaning, and this is not likely to be seen here. There is a kind of joke about this... "every family has a member nobody likes to talk about because that person always has caused trouble" Of course... that brings us to the next counter-arguement we ALWAYS get from idiots who break laws that are there to protects us and our environment.
8-The way people respond to living the way they think they want to live because "by god this is a free country." With this type of "I am always right because I can think for myself" theory floating into the minds of all children is thought to cause children to gain self esteem and the ability to stand their ground, but all I have ever seen is it's ability to make a bunch of asses out of our political figures and the people who spend tireless hours debating the morons that are debating making new laws to get more money all the time. It's silly, but because "we are a free country and free to think what we want" many think that also means "free to do what we want" and often forget than doing what you want may infringe on laws of the nation or on what some one else is doing.
9-Finally I think this one is a little out there, but I figured I would add it any way... The legal system and lawers can often make the Jury think that some one MEANT to kill a pedestrian with their car (even if it was an accident) by calling it "manslaughter". [for example; This happened to child I knew in high school who had been driving drunk. She flew through a stop sign at 60, a sleep at the wheel, and creamed the crap out of a small "deathpod" like import car, killing the hell out of the other driver. He died on the scene, and because the way the laws are written in california she was charged with "involuntary-manslaughter." Granted, driving drunk and sleeping is entirely wrong, manslaughter entails that you killed them with a purpose, even if you had only meant to scare or injure then (as involuntary suggests.) It's nut-butter to think that her sleeping drunken accident who killed a man to pieces is recorded in the books as a "manslaughter" which could be called "a murder" when in an other country it may be written off as "a terrible accident resulting in 1 casualty after a drunk driver fell a sleep at the wheel."] -I suppose you can obviously see where this one goes out on a limb a bit (her being charged with killing a man while only intending to injure him, as involuntary-manslaughter was dictated to me in my government class years a go, where it is obvious she didn't want to hurt the guy) but it does bring about the point that the court may manipulate the muder number in our country and other counties as well. This is not concearning gun-murders, though my dad said that if you have a gun and it accidentally goes off and kills some one you can be charged with involuntary-manslaughter (in california) even if you were not present when the incident occured, simply because as it stands in california "a gun is made to kill, and some one posessing a gun has the intent to use it to kill" and that is widely thought true here. A lawer can take a broad comment like that and stretch it far over the jury's eyes. For this we keep all of our guns and ammo is two seperate safes or locked boxes (in transit to the range if we ever go again.)
There are some starting points. I know they are lengthly and all of their data citation is based on my personal experiences or witness to other experiences, but, I figured it was better to post some ideas at lenght than no ideas.
Peace.
