> Huh? Are you implying that simply existing in the “New World” would cause the baseline expected murder rate to be higher for some reason?

That’s the pattern we empirically see with most New World countries, and if you consider the question with an open mind for a few minutes while considering the history of Western settlement of the Americas you can come up with a few decent hypotheses as far as what the reasons might be.

Another way of looking at it is proximity to the United States, its massive supply of guns and "war on drugs", which somehow seems to be correlated to an increased homicide rate.

The homicide rate in Puerto Rico is super high, comparable to other news world countries, but it’s an island and has almost no guns.

Also, the US homicide rate was extremely high compared to Europe long before gun laws in other countries or the drug war. It was 10x higher than the UK at the turn of the 20th century.

It means different countries have different cultures that value life and violence in different ways.

And that your immediate neighbors will have more of an influence on that than a country on the other side of the world, especially if there's a substantial amount of immigration.

In the case of the US, I'd say it's more-so, because so much of the violence south of our border is directly related to moving things and people over it.