View the full Homicide Monitor here.

LIMA, Peru — It’s the ultimate crime: the taking of a person's life. 

It’s no wonder that people obsess over homicides. Or that politicians and others often accuse the media of giving skewed perceptions of criminal reality, encouraging the public to live in fear, even in relatively safe societies.

Here’s a tool to help put that debate to rest. This new interactive map shows recent homicide data by country, just one click-on-the-globe away.

It's the handiwork of the Igarape Institute, a security think tank in Brazil. The stats are primarily United Nations numbers. But to get into specifics, like weapons and demographics, the researchers mined data from other sources, including police and local agencies. (And for the geek in you, the tool uses WebGL technology.)

Clicking on the globe reveals some interesting, sometimes startling, facts:

• At least 437,000 people die violently around the world each year.
• Roughly four in five victims are male.
• At least 41 percent of all murders are committed with firearms.
• The countries with the lowest homicide rates on the planet are Liechtenstein, Monaco and Singapore.
• Honduras is the world’s murder capital. Venezuela is runner up.
• Latin America and the Caribbean are the most dangerous region: home to just 8 percent of the global population, roughly one-third of the world’s homicides occur there.
• At least five of the 20 most murderous countries by absolute death counts are in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Guatemala.
• The United States’ annual murder rate of 4.7 homicides per 100,000 residents makes it the deadliest Western democracy.
• In Australia, Canada, Japan and the European Union homicide rates hover around or below the 1 per 100,000 mark.
• At least 2 in 5 people murdered in 2012 lived in Brazil, Colombia, India, Mexico, South Africa, the United States or Venezuela.
• In Latin America and the Caribbean, almost half of all homicide victims are aged between 15 and 29.