Germans, Murder, and Numbers

On average.....there are about 690 people murdered in Germany every year.  I saw the statistical display up on Focus (German version of Newsweek).

An American looking over the typical news sites of Germany over a year would usually come to couple of observations.

First, mass murders are somewhat of a rare thing (using the FBI definition of three deaths at one single event).  There's probably three or four of these a year that pop up in Germany.  Most are some neighbor versus neighbor event that has been festering for years.  Occasionally, it'll be some grudge held by some kid who gained access to dad's gun locker and wants revenge.

Second, a lot of these are simply a husband-wife situation involving divorce.  I'd take a humble guess that a quarter of these fit the profile of husband-wife or boyfriend-girlfriend episodes.

Third, a significant number of these don't involve firearms.  I've noticed a number of murders here in Hessen (since the summer of 2013) were simply knives, chocking or blunt-object type murders.  

Fourth, on a few rare occasions here in Hessen.....you get news reports of some guy or gal who got robbed, and somewhere in the confrontation within their house or apartment....the old person got pushed around.....fell against something.....and died right there from a concussion or such.

Fifth, out of eighty million......690 is a fairly low number.  I looked at the US for 2013, and there were 14,196 murders out of 300-million residents.  Detroit by itself in 2013 had 316 murders.....roughly half of what the whole of Germany achieved.  Birmingham, Ala all by itself had 63 murders with a population of 212,000 residents.  Oddly, most of their numbers are by gun.

Sixth, Germans don't seem to worry about this statistic.  You don't see discussion groups on TV chat forums bring this up, or newspaper journalists writing up 7,000-word  epic pieces on murders in Germany.  The only exception in the past year was the German-Turkish gal in Frankfurt who got into some heated discussion with some German-Turkish guy, and he pushed her.....causing her to trip and hit the pavement (she died days later from the concussion).  It's defined as a murder.....although it's mostly a push-and-a-trip situation.

Seventh,  what Germans do seem to focus on.....is the US murder rate.  It'll trigger a discussion where they want to say their piece on why the German lifestyle is better than the American lifestyle.  It would be a worthwhile discussion, until you inject the drug-usage in the US (meth, crack, bath salts, cocaine, PCP, prescription pain-killers, etc) and that the vast majority of US murders involve someone doped up on something.  If you injected tons of meth, crack, bath salts, or PCP onto German society.....the murder rate would sky-rocket overnight, and cause everyone to ask stupid questions and focus on getting armed.

Eighth, and final.....if you watched an entire year of the Channel One (ARD) state-run 8:00 PM news....you'd note maybe five or six murders at best, and you'd have the fake view that there's almost no murders in Germany whatsoever.  You have to remember that around thirty-percent of the 8:00 PM news (where most Germans get their daily dose of news)....is mostly about politics. Around forty-percent revolves around the international world, and ten-percent is sports-related.  So just watching this simple fifteen-minute news piece doesn't say much about the nation itself.