The biggest difference between the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world is youth poverty and the extreme disparities in income between rich and poor. According to the 1995 Luxembourg Income Study, the U.S. raises three to eight times more children in poverty than other Western nations and has the largest and fastest growing income gap between the richest five percent and the poorest five percent. Males took a look at murder rates from the 20 largest industrialized nations. The 40 million young males between the ages of 15 and 24 who live in the 19 industrialized nations other than the U.S. committed 800 of the 7,100 total murders in 1994. In the U.S., that same age group accounted for 6,800 murders and are 16 times more likely to be murdered themselves.
Parents are six times more likely to murder their teenage children than the other way around.
The familiar conservative villain for teen violence is media violence. But that excuse doesn't wash. Males found that the media in other Western nations is just as violent as America's. Japan has extremely violent media, much more so than the U.S., but that nation's nine million teens accounted for just 35 murders in 1992. The familiar liberal villain is gun proliferation.