Safest Countries in the World: We’re Number 129
The Institute for Economics and Peace, a global think tank headquartered in Sydney, Australia, produces an annual Global Peace Index (GPI), ranking the safest and most peaceful countries in the world. For 2023, the GPI measured 163 countries using twenty-three different indicators, such as internal and external violent conflicts, level of distrust, political instability, potential for terrorist acts, number of homicides, and military expenditures as percentage of GDP. The United States ranked 129th and has fallen in ranking every year since 2016. The Trump years, the Big Lie, the January 6th insurrection--certainly all these added to the low ranking; so too, did the mass murders, the gun violence, and the internal violence.
Ranking as the safest countries were Iceland, New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.
In the United States, there seemed to be no end of gun violence. By August 2023, there had been 421 mass murders recorded in the United States, a record pace, along with at least 25,198 persons (118 each day) killed in non-mass murder situation. More than half of those 25,198 used a gun to commit suicide. Of those who died, 879 were teenagers and 170 were children. These figures also include 488 persons killed in police officer-involved shootings, and thirty-four officers killed in the line of duty.
Sources: The Institute for Economics and Peace describes itself as "an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to shifting the world's focus to peace as a positive, achievable and tangible measure of human wellbeing and progress." https://www.economicsandpeace.org; Safest Countries in the World, 2023, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/safest-countries-in-the-world. Kiara Alfonseca, “More than 25,000 People Killed in Gun Violence So Far in 2023,” ABC News, August 3, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/116-people-died-gun-violence-day-us-year/story?id=97382759, citing data from the Gun Violence Archive. The Gun Violence Archive defines “mass shooting” as “four or more victims shot or killed.”
