dscnt: Look at Camden. The 2012 murder rate is 86.3 per 100,000.. A city with a murder rate over 18 times the national average has to be doing something wrong..
One wonders why you go out on a limb & say that using 2012 year stats. Carpe the diem cum 'tempus fugit'. You also chose a year 2012 where Camden had about a 50% spike in murders, the usual murder total appears about 45%.
2002: 33 (40.5), 2003: 41 (51.2), 49 (60.8), 33 (41.2), 32 (40.0), 42 (53.2), 54 (70.9), 34 (43.0), 37 (46.8), 47 (60.6), 67 (86.3), .. 2014: 33 http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Camden-New-Jersey.html
the murder rate has dropped dramatically, by The South Jersey Times' calculations — from a record 67 homicides in 2012 to 58 in 2013 to a relatively paltry 33 at the end of 2014. http://www.shotspotter.com/news/article/is-camden-really-americas-most-dangerous-city-read-more-at-http-www.phillym
.. New York Times report.. suggesting the city is safer: Shootings were down 43%, violent crime down 22%, and the response time by police to emergency calls down to 4.4 minutes — from more than an hour previously.. the city went 40 days without a homicide.
still ranked #1 in violent crime, but: .. its rankings based on 2013 data, the most recent year for which comprehensive nationwide crime statistics are available. But the last two years have seen an overhaul in the way Camden is policed — and a corresponding drop in violent crime.
dscntn: Newark has a murder rate of 34.4 for 2012. That's less than half of Camden's rate but it's still close to 7 times the rate of New York City.
You are taking a relatively small percentage of new jersey's total population of ~9 million. Newark has a quarter million, Camden under 80,000.
New Jersey STATE murder rate in 2013 (steady past dozen years or so) was 4.5 about at the national avg., 21 states were higher, and 18 of those 21 were PRO GUN states: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state#MRord
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