Apparently everyone is getting a big charge out of this graphic provided by The Early Spin blog regarding the number of murders in India vs. the United States.

Apparently this is because Eugene Kane said this today:

He wanted to stress he felt the Juneteenth Day attack was not racially motivated, blaming it instead on out-of-control young people who would have attacked anyone. As someone raised in another country, he has become accustomed to the level of violence in America, which is unlike his native India, where a country half the size of America with more than twice the population has dramatically fewer murders each year.

People are saying that he hasn't done his fact checking... but I'm not sure if that's true.  I say this because when you look at these exact same statistics on a per capita basis, you see that the United States is #24 with 0.042802 per 1,000 people  while India is #26 with 0.0344083 per 1,000 people.  That's because India's population is more than 3 and a half times larger than that of the United States.  So India's murder rate is lower than the United States, even though they are a much more densely packed nation.  There are about 10 times the number of people per square kilometer in India vs. the United States.

Now then, I don't want to get in an argument about who's culture is worse here.  Certainly the concept of "honor killings" against women which is still common in India is both horrifying and beyond comprehension.  And murders, no matter where they occur, are awful and heart wrenching things which destroy societies bit by bit.  But before you start bashing someone for not having proper statistics, be sure yours are right.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take off my Engineer hat again for the rest of the day so I can stop being pissed off by people misusing statistics.