Seriously, most Australians and Brits probably have no idea how pointless it is to bring up stuff like this:
The U.S. has some problems that Australia doesn't have. It's got a lot more racial crimes, it's got a lot more gun-related crimes, but I don't think that is going to drive a whole bunch of ultra-rich Americans out of their country,
What most foreigners consistently get wrong when looking at our crime stats is failing to note that the overwhelming majority of our gun deaths either have a criminal or a suicidal person on the receiving end of the bullet. Since it's illegal in all 50 states and DC to shoot someone over a non-violent offense or even a violent misdemeanor, that almost invariably means that when a criminal is shot it's either by someone who by definition doesn't respect the law (fellow criminal) or someone about to be on the receiving end of a violent felony.
I can't blame them for this misunderstanding. Our gun control lobby is notorious for manipulating stats by doing stuff like putting gangbangers near the age of majority, who are both eligible to be prosecuted as adults and involved in serious crime when killed, as "children" under the death stats. That's about as bad as most countries refusing to count the death of premature babies on their mortality rates and mocking us for our higher mortality rate because we record those as infant deaths.
Your example of being "notorious for manipulating stats" by clasifying people "near" the age of majority as children seems pretty disingenuous. Are these people younger than the age of majority or older? If they are in fact younger than that age and only "eligible to be prosecuted as adults", why would it be "manipulating stats" to clasify them as children? If they are older than the age of majority, and thus presumably not even eligible to be prosucuted as children, why wouldn't you state that?
It is interesting that statistics can be difficult to compare when dealing with things like crime or death stats. It is also interesting how easy it is to dismiss uncomfortable conclusions. I wouldn't say we are being "mocked" by other countries and I doubt very much that anyone is "refusing" to count things - they just do their statistics different (despite our feelings of importance, most countries are too busy worrying about their own troubles to spend much energy over ours). In any case, any careful look at the state of afairs does reveal that we certainly have room for improvement. Our full term mortality rate is higher than it should be.
http://www.livescience.com/479...
"...the U.S. infant mortality rate for babies born at 37 weeks or later (considered "full term") was actually the highest among the 12 countries, and about twice the rates in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland."
I suspect that you probably misunderstand the feelings of foreigners when thinking about the USA. While you might not care that "the overwhelming majority of our gun deaths either have a criminal or a suicidal person on the receiving end of the bullet", it is at least possible that those foreigners are appalled that we seem to think that it is acceptable that criminals and suicidal people are being killed. It can be seen to speak to the value that our society places on human lives. The USA is exeptional in many ways. Unfortunately not all of those ways are things we shold be proud of.