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Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

Murders in the US are extremely unevenly distributed. Most Americans live their entire lives without ever knowing anyone who was murdered. Many "bad neighborhoods" are not bad because of the prevalence of murder, but because of the prevalence of burglary, theft, etc.

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I don't really care about those crimes because I don't own valuable things. I could recover easily if someone stole my car, which is worth less than $1,000.

I do care about rape, assault, and murder. I don't ever want to be caught up in that. So I was very glad to learn that though my small town has an above average murder rate, it's between people who don't associate with me.

Anecdotally, I wonder how true this is. I'm two degrees separated from two people who were murdered--one was a colleague of my father (killer never caught, suspected they knew each other, though), one a friend of my sister (also never caught, though less likely a friend/acquaintance due to her age). Surely my experience isn't that unique?? If so, wow.

I don't think it is unique if you are using two degrees of separation.

A) A friend's sister who got addicted to crack and was murdered by a guy her bf pissed off. He was caught.

B) One of my previous bosses had a cousin murdered in a domestic terrorist attack.

I think the world has about 3.5 degrees of separation. Probably 2 degrees is more than half the country?

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