What was claimed
The US has the third-highest murder rate in the world.
Our verdict
Misleading. The US is 53rd in the world for intentional homicide.
AAP FACTCHECK - The US doesn't have the third-highest homicide rate in the world, despite claims circulating on social media.
UN data covering more than 160 countries shows the US is ranked around 53rd for intentional homicides per 100,000 people in the country.
A second, associated claim is that the US would fall to 189th out of 193 countries with the removal of Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, St Louis and Philadelphia.
However, the data suggests the country's ranking wouldn't change drastically with the removal of the five cities.
The claims were made in a graphic posted by a New Zealand-based Facebook user in January, which showed a row of guns with a text panel overlaid.
"The US has the 3rd highest murder rate in the world," the post reads.
"If you remove: 1. Chicago; 2.Detroit; 3. Washington DC; 4. St. Louis; 5. Philadelphia, The US is then 189th out of 193 countries in the world. All five cities have strict gun control laws and are controlled by Democrats. Fact-check it."
The caption adds: "Firearms, or more accurately, courageous firearms users, contrary to the cowardly leftist narrative actually protect lives."
AAP FactCheck approached the user for evidence to support the claims, but did not receive a response.
The claims are misleading. Murder carries specific legal definitions that differ around the world; this complicates comparisons, such as ranking all 193 UN member states.
AAP FactCheck was unable to identify any global datasets that measured murder rates specifically across UN member states.
The UN instead uses a measure called intentional homicide to provide a comparison across countries, which it defines as "unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person" (Page 1).
In the UN dataset on intentional homicide rates, the US ranks about 53rd in the world, based on statistics compiled between 2015 and 2023.
The rate in the US was 5.76 per 100,000 people in 2023, much lower than the third-ranked Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which was 51.3 per 100,000.
While the post cites 193 countries - the number of UN member states - only 168 countries have reported homicide data to the UN since 2015.
Many countries haven't reported data every year, so the UN uses each country's most recent available figures between 2015 and 2023.
Nevertheless, the inclusion of all 193 UN member countries would not push the US into third place because more than 50 countries that have reported their data are still ranked above it.
The second claim in the Facebook post is that removing Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, St Louis and Philadelphia would move the US down to 189th out of 193.
While only 168 countries have reported intentional homicide data to the UN, those near the bottom of the ranking have reported rates far below one per 100,000 people in 2023.
This includes Singapore (0.07), Japan (0.23), South Korea (0.48), Italy (0.57) and Spain (0.6). Australia reported 0.85 in 2023.
The US rate was 9.6 times higher than Spain's and 82 times higher than Singapore's.
Therefore, unless the removal of the five cities reduced the US rate by a factor of 10, it couldn't rank fourth lowest, even on a list of 193 countries.
Homicide statistics are available for the five US cities cited in the post, though these are collected by individual cities and aren't part of the UN dataset
Using data collected by US cities alongside UN statistics is fraught, as the statistics are measured differently.
Nevertheless, the data shows 1719 homicides were recorded across Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, St. Louis and Philadelphia in 2023.
That's less than 10 per cent of the 19,796 intentional homicides across the US in 2023 in the UN dataset.
Removing the five cities' homicides would drop the US total to 18,077.
Removing both the homicides and the 5.9 million combined residents from these cities would reduce the US intentional homicide rate to 5.43 per 100,000 people.
That would place it about 56th out of the 168 countries in the UN dataset.
The only jurisdictions that would move above the US after such an adjustment would be Burundi and Guadeloupe.
Similar claims that removing five major US cities would move the country down the global rankings for gun violence to 189th were debunked in 2024 by PolitiFact.
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