America has a single federal government, yes. If you just want a ranking, you can go ahead and use the national average.

However, America is ridiculously diverse culturally, and just using the national average is useless for understanding anything about America.

Perhaps the Americans in the thread aren't trying to avoid an unfavorable comparison - it's not like Americans aren't aware of the pros and cons of their own country. Perhaps they're actually trying to teach you something about their country and point out that relying on averages can be misleading.

"Sorta". It's more appropriate to compare it to the EU than to, say, Germany. The EU will still come out ahead in terms of murder rate, but it more accurately reflects the US in terms of both governmental structure and diversity of people (Louisiana is as different from Washington as Italy is from Finland)

America is one united federation of states. The federal government still exercises surprisingly little control over individual states, although that control is increasing over time. Most of the federal controls exist merely to regulate inter-state commerce to make sure there are no unfair practices where Michigan can enact laws to keep Indiana businesses from operating in their state. However, two neighboring states can have wildly different laws on local issues. Michigan for the longest time required motorcyclists to wear helmets when the neighboring states didn't, and only allows heavy trucks to have two trailers where other surrounding states allow them to carry three trailers at once.

Classifying America as one solid country all across is, to be honest, quite inappropriate. It's more of a slightly more put-together European Union, with a federal government existing just to make sure everyone plays fairly.

Finland is 5.3 million people.

Norway is 5 million people.

Sweden is 9.5 million people.

Michigan is 9.8 million people.

California is 37.6 million people.

New York is 19.4 million people

Germany is 81.7 million people.

Please keep scale in mind.

If you think about it this one, then wouldn't it be best to compare homicides per kilometer or mile? The point the parent was making is entirely valid though- the United States is a huge country compared to most.

Believe it or not, I don't disagree with you. The majority of states in the US are not what you would think of as "developed" by any objective measure-- be it crime, poverty, health, education, or equality. That is why I included states like Louisiana with murder rates comparable to some African nations.

But you cannot deny that some regions of the US are developed, are great places to live, and are comparable in terms of geographic area, population, and economic output with the European countries mentioned in this thread. Basically, to anyone who has spent time here, Louisiana is as different from Oregon as Lithuania is from Denmark. To lump all the states together and draw meaning from the statistical average is to fundamentally misunderstand what America is: a coalition of independent states, with different agendas and demographics.

The UK does not have quite the racial divide that is prevalent in the US. Remember that minorities were treated as second-class citizens here as recently as the 1960s, and are still subject to institutionalized discrimination. Socioeconomic mobility is much worse here than in the UK, reinforcing the "ghettoization" of minority groups in the US.

Factor in easy access to modern weaponry, an actively-discriminating and mostly white police force, and the war on drugs, and you have a mixing pot of racial tension, poverty, and crime.

Oregon is mostly white, so is Minnesota, Vermont, and New Hampshire. A city like New Orleans is 67% black, is mostly poor, and has one of the highest homicide rates in the country. I haven't come across a city like that in the UK.

My home town, Portland, is extremely segregated. The black population here is concentrated in an area smaller than a square mile in the Northeast quarter, and both crime rates and gang activity there outrank the rest of the city by a factor of five. This is a consequence of Oregon's racist policies (our state constitution actually banned African-American residency) that were in force until World War II, when a large black population migrated here to work at a shipbuilding yard in Northeast. After the war, a flood took out the shipbuilding yard and put most of those families out of work; their descendants are still in the same area, subject to socioeconomic pressures that keep them there.

So while Portland might sound like a great place to live, it is only because the crime is segregated into a small section of the city while white people enjoy kitchy neighborhoods and craft fairs.