Re: Also:

And you believe them? Funny how you believe them when it suits you. Maybe it's right, but does it matter?

It is believable because the rates climbed with the Drug War. And because the demographics match drug arrests well enough.

It matters because it means the murder rate is artificially inflated by the War on Drugs.

Do you think drugs aren't an issue in countries where guns are barred?

Western and Eastern Europe alike deal with drugs differently than the Americas do, which likely makes their own versions of the WoD less violent even at high consumption rates. East Asia looks a little more like the Americas in letter of the law, but their cultures are more puritan about recreational drug use, which probably lowers their rates of consumption, and their organized crime has seen no reason to deviate, at least in local operations, from older core businesses in extortion, smuggling of otherwise legal products, prostitution, exotic animals, and the like.

The whole Americas tell the same story: Drug War escalates, murder escalates. Whatever the gun laws, whether the country is poor or not, Mestizo or Black, politically stable or unstable. I seriously believe the "real" murder rate in the USA and most of the Americas is not too different from Europe (for the USA) and from emerging Asia (for Latin America and the Caribbean).