In the wake of the tragic shooting in Connecticut, Mike Huckabee said that the murders were due to the fact that we have removed God from our schools.

Uh huh.

The murders occurred, Gov. Huckabee, because we let guns INTO our schools, not because we took God out. After all, the United States is a relatively religious place, among the wealthy democracies of the world. It may be the most religious.

Yet our murder rate is higher than other developed countries. In particular, it is higher, much higher, than the 4 developed countries with the highest proportion of atheists.

Those four? Well, it varies by survey, but Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Japan. are all very atheistic. All of them, according to Phil Zuckerman's site have very large atheist populations, although estimates vary widely. His estimates range from 33 to 85% atheists for those countries. The USA? 3 to 9 %.

Their murder rates per 100,000?

Denmark 0.9

Sweden 1.0

Norway 0.6

Japan 0.3

In fact, Japan has the lowest murder rate of any country of more than miniscule size (the only three that are lower are Hong Kong, Monaco and Palau). What is the rate in the USA? 4.2. More than 4 times the highest of those atheistic countries.

Of course, there are many reasons for the murder rate to vary. Some say that countries that are less culturally diverse have lower murder rates. But at least one country in Europe is, like the United States, wealthy and very diverse. In the United Kingdom, the murder rate is 1.2. And, per Zuckerman's site, at least 1/3 of people in Britain are atheists. But England has gun control.