Fact check: If New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Memphis were removed from gun violence statistics, where would the US rank for gun violence in the world?

1. What the original statements actually claim—and what they leave out.

The set of supplied analyses advances three key empirically grounded claims: Memphis had the highest metro murder rate (26.6/100,000, 2018–2023); Chicago posts the largest absolute number of homicides among the largest US cities even though its rate is not the highest; and mass shootings have become more frequent over decades but are often tied to domestic contexts rather than being the sole driver of homicide trends ^{[1] [2] [3]}. None of the items include a recalculated US national homicide or firearm‑death rate with those four cities excluded, nor do they present a consistent international ranking metric that would be comparable across countries ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Why you cannot just “drop four cities” and read off a new global rank.

National rankings use consistent denominators (per‑capita rates) and comparable definitions of homicides and firearm homicides; to remove four cities you must subtract both their counts and populations and then recompute national rates. The supplied material documents city rates and national context but does not provide the required summed counts of firearm homicides for the entire United States nor international rates computed with identical definitions, so any global placement after deletions would be speculative without additional data ^{[1] [2] [4]}.

3. What the supplied US city data suggest about directionality if cities were removed.

Removing cities with high murder rates or high counts will tend to lower the national homicide rate, but the magnitude depends on each city’s share of total US homicides and population. The materials indicate Memphis’s elevated rate and Chicago’s high counts, implying a non‑trivial downward effect on the US rate if both were excluded, with additional but smaller effects from New York and Los Angeles because of their larger populations and differing rates ^{[1] [2]}. However, the analyses stop short of quantifying those shares or showing the post‑removal national rate.

4. How the international context complicates a clean ranking change.

Global homicide comparisons rest on datasets like UN‑ODC and other compilations that often reflect differing years, reporting completeness, and whether firearm homicides are separated from total homicides. The supplied global notes say countries such as Honduras have far higher rates (e.g., 90.4/100,000 in 2012) and that perceptions of safety create different rankings (one Gallup measure placed the US at 77th by women’s safety perceptions), underscoring that the US occupies varied positions depending on metric and year ^{[4] [5] [6]}. Removing four US cities could change a per‑capita gun‑death ranking, but without recalculated per‑country values on the same metric and year you cannot place the US reliably.

5. Local drivers, stability, and interventions that matter for ranking decisions.

City‑level research emphasizes that gun violence geography can be stable over time and responsive to local interventions such as greening projects, which have shown large localized reductions in violent crime; mass shootings have increased in frequency though they represent a small share of overall gun deaths ^{[7] [8] [3]}. These local dynamics mean that removing particular metropolitan areas from a national tally erases underlying structural and policy information about what is driving higher rates and whether those drivers are unique or representative of wider national patterns.

6. Political framing and possible agendas behind “drop-the-cities” hypotheticals.

The supplied pieces note that claims about crime and political stewardship are often mobilized in partisan debates; analyses showing that high‑crime cities may be governed by one party are used to imply causation despite more complex drivers, which the data do not support ^[1]. Therefore, asking how the US would rank after dropping a handful of cities can function rhetorically to minimize national problems or to shift attention to local governance, so any credible answer should disclose intent and calculation choices.

7. Bottom line: what would be required to answer the question precisely.

To produce a trustworthy new global rank you need: (a) annual counts of firearm homicides for the entire US and for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Memphis for the same year^[9]; (b) exact population figures to recompute per‑100,000 rates after removing those cities; and (c) a comparable international dataset using the same definition and year. The supplied analyses document important pieces—city rates, trends, and international high‑rate outliers—but they do not supply those complete, harmonized datasets or a post‑removal ranking calculation, so the question cannot be answered definitively on the basis of these sources alone ^{[1] [2] [4] [7]}.