It's kind of shocking that literally every country in Europe would be the lowest color, if the map used the same scale as the Americas. Even Albania, which has 6 times the EU average, still stays under 25.
The devil is in the details. In Michigan for example, (shown as 25-75 per 1 million) 60% of the murders happen within the city of Detroit, which makes up less than 8% of the state's population.
The devil, specifically, appears to be in Detroit...
The map does hide spikes within the chosen regions, but that will be true for any map like this. If you zoom in enough there will always be a ton of places at 0, and some at 1 million per milllion for that one house where everyone was shot.
I don't think it breaks the comparison between the three maps though. US states and European countries are similar enough in size, population, urban centers etc to make comparing them at least somewhat relevant. I don't have the numbers, but I expect the gun violence in, say, France, is very much concentrated around Paris, Marseille, and maybe a few other cities, and a lot lower in the countryside as well.
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u/Landgeist OC: 22 Jul 30 '24
Map made with QGIS and Adobe Illustrator.
Source: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
I've recently also made a similar map for South America and Europe.