No way NY has 600 murders a week! NY has as raw number, a lot of murders.. but it also has 8 million residents (NYC proper) and a daytime population of over 15 million! (and even if it was 600, that would be, be about 0.004%! (based on day time population) actually rather low!(even based on 8 million is 0.0075%!) you have a 99.99+% chance of not getting murdered.
Cincinatti, (just to pick on an other city,) has lower raw numbers, but it has a much higher percent of the population being murdered. and nobody thinks cincinatti is all that dangerous!
And all east coast cities, generally, have lower percentages than western cities. there are many more gun contols laws in the east than there are in the west.
EDIT
based on tsuwm link, i should have said, southern states are more dangerous!
