The Moms Demand Action (A.K.A Million Mom March, Part Dos) posted this twitter yesterday:

This comes from an article in The Atlantic by Richard Florida who compares Homicide Rates (Or gun death rates or something as he jumps terms with ease) of US Cities against Homicide Rates of other countries. Here is the graphic accompanying the article:

If you don’t think about it, you are bound to go “ZOMG! This is horrible!” but the premise on itself is false as comparing a city against a whole country is basically dishonest. Take Florida and Miami for instance: The murder rate for the whole state is 5.2 per 100,000 and Miami-Dade county is 8.2 per 100K as heavy urban locations will have more violent crime than many small towns and cities dispersed across the land. And if you are wondering “why does the graphic say Miami is 23.7?” I am wondering that too as I could not find nothing close to that number anywhere in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement website.

And Miami was not the only one with suspect numbers. I did a quick check on both the UNODC reports and either local PD or FBI UCR and the stats provided are way off on the plus side for certain cities in the US if located in Gun Friendly states and Countries have reduced murder stats which leads me to think a certain disingenuous “editing” on the author of this hit piece. One example is the Houston/Ecuador pairing: according to the UNDOC, Ecuador’s murder rate is 18.2 but the graphic shows 12.7. Houston is shown to be 12.9 but the latest numbers from Houston PD shows it a 9.0/ South Africa appears to have only 17 per 100K in the graphic when in reality the stat is 31.8 (again by UNODC) and even the number given of Honduras (#1 in murders in the world) is bad enough but not close to reality: 91.6 per 100K versus the published 68.4 to be touted against the also posted 62.1 in New Orleans but that in reality is 53.5 (Bad enough to rank #3 in US murders but inflating it does not help their cause).

But how come they do not pit City versus City? Because they would take a beating so bad it would could be heard in the afterworld. New York (5.6) v. Buenos Aires, Argentina (3.9), Atlanta (17.7) versus Cape Town, South Africa (59.9) and the list goes on. The author of course will not tell you that those cities are in countries with gun control so strict, it would Senators Feinstein & Schummer tingles up their legs and other bodily parts.

Why do they need to lie? We know the answer.

Sources: UNODC Homicide statistics 2012 and Homicides in the most populous city.