carry them openly. Furthermore, Israeli soldiers usually carry rifles (including ammunition) on home leave. Notwithstanding or because of the high rate of gun ownership, the rate of gun related crime (e.g. armed robbery and shootings) is very low in Israel. Presumably, this is either because mandatory military service educates most Israelis about proper gun use, or because criminal are deterred by the real possibility of an armed victim.
There are 5 relevant types of homicide in Israel:
- Murder. The premeditated killing of a person or the intentional killing of a person whilst committing, preparing for, or escaping from any crime is murder. The mandatory punishment for this crime is life imprisonment. Life is usually commuted (clemency from the President) to 30 years from which a third can be deducted by the parole board for good behaviour. Terrorists are not usually granted pardons or parole other than as part of deals with terrorist organizations or foreign governments and in exchange for captured Israelis (or their bodies).
- Reduced sentenced murder. Where the murderer did not fully understand his actions because of mental defect (but not legal insanity or imbecility), or in circumstances close to self-defence, necessity or duress or where the murderer suffered from serious mental distress because of long-term abuse, the court can give a sentence of less than life.
- The deliberate killing of a person without premeditation (or the other circumstances of murder) is manslaughter for which the maximum sentence is 20 years.
- Negligent killing or vehicular killing. Maximum sentence is 3 years (minimum of 6 months for the driver).
- Infanticide where a woman killed her baby of less than 12 months and could show she was suffering from the effects of the birth or breast-feeding. Maximum sentence is 5 years.
 Vikings (8th to 11th centuries)
The Viking culture had no concept of murder. If you killed someone, then it was up to you to pay the family fair compensation (weregild) for the labor lost by the member's death. If the perpetrator refused to pay weregild, it was up to the family of the slain to extract it from the perpetrator, or take his life.
The only other type of killing with consequences in Viking culture was "unjust killing', i.e., while the victim was sleeping, or if the victim's back was turned. While there were no more financial repercussions for this other than the normal rules of weregild, the killer in question suffered from a tremendous loss of trust.
 Other uses of the word
The word "murder" is sometimes used colloquially to mean some forms of mistreatment, e.g. a bad singer "murdering" a song, or describing something difficult to handle as "absolute murder". Sometimes during sports play an opponent may tell his rival "I'm gonna murder you!", "I'm gonna kill you!", "I'm murdering you!" or "I'm killing you!".
A murder is also the name given to a flock of crows (see also Collective nouns for birds).
 Murder demographics
Murder occurrences vary wildly among different countries and societies. In the Western world, murder rates in most countries have declined significantly during 20th century and are now between 1-3 cases per 100,000 people per year. Murder rates of Japan and Iceland are among the lowest in the world, around 0.5; rate of United States is highest among all developed countries, at 5.5 (2000). On the other hand, developing countries often have rates of 10-100 murders per 100,000 people per year.
Evolution of murder rates over time in different countries is often used by both supporters and opposers of capital punishment and gun control. Using properly filtered data, is possible to make the case for or against either of these issues. For example, one could look at murder rates in United States during 1950-2000  and notice that those rates went up sharply shortly after a moratorium on death sentences was effectively imposed in late 1960's. This fact could be used to argue that capital punishment serves as a deterrent and, as such, it is morally justified. Capital punishment opposers would counter th