AUGUSTA, Maine — A state-by-state assessment measuring crime, guns and other factors lists Maine as the most peaceful state.
The nonpartisan, independent Institute for Economics and Peace released its annual peace index on Tuesday. The ranking is based on analysis of homicide, violent crime, policing, incarceration rates and availability of small arms data.
Overall, it finds the Northeast to be America’s most peaceful region with the lowest homicide, violent crime and incarceration rates in the country. The South is the least peaceful region with the highest homicide, violent crime, and incarceration rates, as well as the highest prevalence of gun ownership, and the second highest police employee rate.
Maine is America’s most peaceful state with recorded reductions in the homicide and incarceration rates as well as the number of police employees. Louisiana ranked last for the 11th year in a row.
The survey, first issued in 1991, finds that the United States improved in all five categories over 2011, including a 3.2 percent drop in homicides and a 5.5 percent reduction in violent crimes.
Maybe a certain political party should not be trying to turn the entire country into the south.
Damn Green Party!
It’s sad how peace is not even on the radar of those who serve Money.
I know! I wish Nancy Pelosi had had her mind set on gun control instead of voting in favor of Operation Iraqi freedom to invade Iraq right? Instead she just jet sets around spending millions of taxpayer dollars and dumping tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Good point.
You bring hate to an article about peace.
Your argument: Pelosi flies around in a plane, therefore she is a bad person.
Do you really think that is a good argument, which Limbaugh fed into your mind? It was dissected and disinfected of Republican hate-mongering long ago:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/pelosi/jet.asp
Well said SpruceDweller!
I think you mean those that send money!I could be real peaceful living off other peoples money.
The last time I drove through Lewiston, I was pretty sure that it was the Democrats who want to turn the entire country into the south. Don’t know too many Republicans who’d support that.
we are the whitest state! oh boy…
50% hibernate in their parents basement.They only fight on line and come out when their welfare check shows up.
Let’s not forget the other 50% who enjoy shooting anything in fur or crushing the skulls of ducklings with their bare feet!
We have to eat . should we send in our profits from the hunt also.
That’s a tad rough. Let’s make it 2% and that might be closer to the truth.
This very well could be the list of the whitest states in the country. Hmmm.
It’s sad but true, the whites are the least affected by big-government socialist engineering which is what was set up in terms of housing projects and welfare systems which mostly affect minorities. Being kept down in the dumps chained to the government handouts as they are, they tend towards higher drug and crime rates. I say this in terms of relative rates of welfare use, not to suggest that all minorities do, just that more of them do, and at the hand of the government.
Funny, because in other posts you moan about Maine’s “Big Government, Socialist blah blah” tying people down, but now you are claiming race is a factor, even though Maine is the whitest state in the country. Are you saying that Maine is not affected by “Big Government Socialist Blah Blah” or are you just confused?
Could there be a connection? You think?
As some criminals have found out……..Home invasions and robbery can be dangerous in Maine.
Correct and rightly so!
Yes, the fact that most rural and small town homes in Maine are armed is probably why we rate high on the Peace index.
People need the means to defend themselves; Maine people believe that and act on it. Thus, would-be home invaders know this, too. Hence, fewer break-ins, at least when people are home, which means less violence on persons.
Now come and join the living, it’s not so far from you
And it’s getting nearer, soon it will all be true
Now I’ve been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating, why can’t we live in bliss
Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again – Cat Stevens
This is so because we lead the country in per capita gun ownership!
Huh?
“The South is the least peaceful region with the highest homicide, violent crime, and incarceration rates, as well as the highest prevalence of gun ownership, and the second highest police employee rate.”
Maine has a higher rate of gun ownership than many southern states.
Totally agree..
. . . and a lower minority population. But the ranking doesn’t take that into consideration does it?
The south has this level of crime due to higher rates of poverty brought on by socialist policies like the new-deal, housing projects, and various welfare systems which have kept African Americans down in the dumps and stuck in line begging for handouts from the democrats for decades now. This all leads to higher drug use rates which equals more crime. Having more guns has nothing to do with it. London has a much higher rate of per-capita crime than many American cities and London has no legally owned guns… go figure.
This is foolish. Are you saying that poverty rates were lower before the new deal/great society etc? You are 100% wrong on that.
You know what, your right. Maybe we should go back to dealing with minorites the same way the south did before the 60’s. Good idea.
Ah-ha, and there it is, lose the argument on ideas and turn it into a racist accusation. The CLASSIC liberal technique of trying to win an unwinnable argument. I said nothing of going backwards in terms of social equality and legal issues of civil rights, quite the opposite in fact. I suggest that big welfare policies (all socialist / liberal ideas for the most part) are themselves civil rights violations in how they punish minorities more than whites in terms of keeping them chained to a system with no way out. Get real!
“higher rates of poverty brought on by….’ is a 100% factually inaccurate comment and it is what your entire point was based around. 100% wrong. Not a shread of truth to it. Completly false. The CLASSIC conservative technique of making things up. Poverty rates were much, much, much higher before the welfare programs you mentioned. White and black alike. Double, in fact.
Who stuck “African American” into a comment? You did.
South socialist? They are practically the reddest states in the union, governed largely by Republicans.
So helping people to get jobs leads to more violence? Huh? Weird logic there, AgentP.
Actually, we don’t. We’re number 24 which means 23 above and 26 below.
per capita
Hmmm, Maine has the most rural population, the oldest median age population, and the fastest addiction rate to Oxycontin, and now the most peaceful state…see a pattern?
It is interesting that they consider a lower # of firearms per capita to equate to lower crime rates. Statistical analysis proves the opposite. Crime rates tend to go down when the gun ownership rate goes up. FBI statistics show that DC, after the Heller decision, has experienced a decrease in total crimes and gun related crimes – even with their draconian (and I believe illegal) registration requirements.
“The South is the least peaceful region with the highest homicide, violent crime, and incarceration rates, as well as the highest prevalence of gun ownership, and the second highest police employee rate.”
This seems to refute your claim.
I still find this hard to believe. I don’t know one single person that doesn’t own at least one weapon. Maybe we are looking at it wrong? For example, if Maine has 1 million people, and 800,000 have a weapon, vs. floridas 10 million people and 1 million gun owners?
I just find it hard to believe that Maine would rank low in gun ownership.
I agree……Some people in maine own atleast 10 guns………..
Only 10! Why are they so deprived?
Not deprived, it is a right to own guns…. I like 20 or more…
I was joking! Even 20 is just a good start!
According to usacarry.com, Maine ranks 24th in percent of gun ownership by percentage. If you look over the list, gun ownership doesn’t seem to have much to do with the peace index. I couldn’t resist finding the correlation between the peace index and gun ownership by percent. The correlation is 0.05, essentially zero. A high rate of gun ownership or a low rate of gun ownership makes no difference.
I think they don’t know what the gun ownership rate really is. I know a man that kept 35-40 guns in a crawlspace in his house until he passed. I know a couple Seattle libber types that I suspect don’t own a weapon otherwise everyone on our close group of friend has a minimum of two or three.
You break into his house- he opens the cellar door- you put the silverware in your bag-he goes down the steps- you look through the drawers for valuables and take them- he crawls into the crawl space- you take another look around for goodies- he backs out of the crawl space- you exit the house and run off- he locks and loads- you drive away in the get-away-car- he bursts into the kitchen, guns blazing- you head for a fence and some “fix” money- he calls for an ambulance for his shot up wife. Yup
I worry about your crowd. Most of my acquaintences are unarmed.
Don’t worry about us, we’ll be fine.
Look, guns are not all about killing . Some of the fondest memories I have is with both past, and present family members, out back, with a .357 at 35 yards making nickle bets on aim. Or in the pit with a 30-30 at 100 yards doing the same. I don’t hunt, and my weapons will one day be handed down to my grandchildren, (except for the .270, i’ll bring that with me). But if the unthinkable should happen, I have the ability to either protect, or feed my family.
Wrong, your connection is off-base. The crime in the south is due to other factors of culture, employment, and drug culture, not guns. In fact, if there were fewer legally owned guns in the south, the crime rate would be much higher. London has no guns, and many of the citizens even in the nicer suburban neighborhoods live in constant fear of the wild and unruly chavs who harass, vandalize, steal and assault. Meanwhile the Pikeys run wild ripping metal off of anything worth stealing. Great gun-free culture they have going over there wouldn’t you say?
If you consider the demographic differences between the regions, that in itself will give you the reason why violent crime rates are lower in Maine. There are prolific amounts of guns owned legally and illegally around the country. It’s not the amount of guns in any one given location that is creating any given statistic, it is the user(s) of the weapon . Plain and simple. You gotta have a trigger finger to pull the trigger.
I just did a statistical analysis. I used percent of gun ownership from usacarry.com and violent crimes per 100,000 from the Census Bureau. The correlation is -0.09 which is virtually zero for statistical purposes. So, all in all, rates of gun ownership has no bearing on violent crime one way or another.
I got curious about gun ownership and the murder rate per 100,000 on a state by state basis. That came out with a correlation of 0.00. I don’t know when I have ever seen correlation come out to zero. The percent of people owning guns has no bearing on the murder rate. Doesn’t help, doesn’t hurt.
Probably because we have strong 2nd Amendment rights
Peace “don’t” sell guns.
It guarantees it.. ;-)
of course it does, like the peace it brought to Flordia.
You will always be able to find people that abuse things, look at Washington.
Our country was founded on the rights and ability for the individual to protect themselves.
As far as the Florida case; unlike some, I’m not going to draw conclusions from the court of media opinion. My only opinion is that if this guy shot a kid in the back as he was fleeing, or posed no real and present danger, then he is probably guilty.
From the BDN Nov 2009 (in “Similar Articles” at the bottom of this article:
A comprehensive study on gun violence conducted by the Muskie Policy Center at the University of Southern Maine in 2004 concluded that Maine had the lowest rate of firearm use in violent crimes in the country. Among its findings was the average person had a 1 in 14,136 chance of being a victim of a violent gun crime in Maine.
The FBI’s 2008 Report on Crime in the United States ranks Maine the safest state when it comes to violent crime, with a rate of 117.5 victims per 100,000 population. It did not single out gun violence in the statistics.
Back to me:
Maine has liberal (compared to Chicago, DC, Virginia or Massachusetts) firearms laws. It is a right to carry state. It has a fairly high level of weapons per capita. And we are safe.
I moved here to avoid the “Drive-By de jour” and raise my daughter in an environment more like that when I was a child in the 60’s and 70’s. Maine has not dissapointed.
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Having marijuana as our number one cash-crop probably helps keep people in a crime-free stupor most of the time. Not to mention we have the fewest housing projects.
The 10 Worst States to Retire in:
http://www.aarp.org/work/retirement-planning/info-09-2010/10-worst-rated-states-for-retirement.2.html
10. Wisconsin
9. New York
8. Washington
7. Rhode Island
6. Maryland
5. Alaska
4. Connecticut
3. Massachusetts
2. Michigan
1. Maine
The 10 Best States to Retire in:
http://www.aarp.org/work/retirement-planning/info-09-2010/10-best-rated-states-for-retirement.2.html
10. Kansas
9. Tennessee
8. South Dakota
7. Mississippi
6. Virginia
5. Louisiana
4. Iowa
3. Oklahoma
2. Kentucky
1. Texas
Well, then, head off to Texas. I’m staying here, thanks. I might consider Kentucky, possibly Iowa, but as far as the rest of the ten best, they’re all yours.
Where is Florida?
You think Florida is a good state to retire to?
Basis for the rankings? Relevance to this article?
LOL nonpartisan? LOL
Michael Shank, the Peacenik nonpartisan honcho behind this radical outfit is the “Sr policy adviser” to left wing crackpot Democrat Congressman from California, Mike Honda.
The non-partisan IEP website states the following:
“The problems we are facing are global in nature. They include climate change, ever decreasing biodiversity, full use of the fresh water on the planet and underpinning all these – overpopulation. Without peace we will be unable to achieve the levels of cooperation, inclusiveness and social equity required to begin solving these challenges, let alone empower the international institutions needed to regulate them.”
Climate change, environmentalism, social equity, international regulation – yeah they sound pretty non-partisan to me. What their cite doesn’t list is their source of funding. Can anyone guess where the money to push this agenda comes from?
I’m sure once Governor serene gets wind of this, the infighting
will ratchet up to an all-time high. Peace what a liberal pansy thought.
Its the most peacefull till you see how bad the drug problem is, yet on the other hand, small business is virtually destroyed so on one can be productive anymore.
“Maine named most peaceful state.”
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Unless, of course, it’s midnight under the Golden Dome at the Statehouse in Augusta, and there’s DHHS cuts on the legislative tables.
Amazing. A simple declaration reporting Maine as the most peaceful of states, has popped the republican – tea party cork.
Quickly shredded to make a political point, Maine’s peaceful rating has been turned into a rant about the South, Nancy Pelosi jetting, guns, Iraq, red necks, crime, and socialism. What creative minds.
Despite some unsettling matters, including this radical right wing rhetoric, Maine is still a peaceful place. We can still find peace within its millions of acres of woods, and, on its many beaches, and lake shores. We can sail, paddle, or just drift along, free of the dull and ideological ramblings which attempt to disrupt the peace we love.
Thanks for a good laugh. “A simple declaration reporting Maine as the most peaceful of states, has popped the republican – tea party cork. ” Appreciate that…..{~;>
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You will never have to worry about construction noise in Maine. The Republicans took care of any rebuilding of Maine’s infrastructure, they voted it down in Congress. Bridges and Roads rot away very quietly. Maybe just a little noise when one of Maine’s bridges collapse.
Why did the dems and JB spend all the road money??
What’s that got to do with being a “peaceful state?” As for the roads…if anyone is going to get a start on fixing them, it’s going to be a Republican. Fixing and BUILDING.
Stay away visitors!!!! we are only nice on the outside!!!! We eat meat here!!!
try taking food stamps and welfare away from mainers so they have to work for a living., instead of leaching off the other49 states…….then tell me how peaceful the state is