This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

Welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service, I'm Charlotte McDonald and I'm Simon Maven.

This week, how safe are America's cities.

There's just killed somebody, Dale Cam.

They just killed someone.

They started shooting bullets at us and throwing tear gas and this guy got hit.

There have been violent protests in Charlotte, North Carolina this week after a black man was killed by police in the city.

It's the third black death at the hands of police in a week in the US and the shootings and protests add to the sense that American cities are dangerous places to be.

But how dangerous are they?

Our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they've ever been in before, ever, ever, ever.

You take a look at the inner cities, you get no education, you get no jobs, you get shot walking down the street.

They're worse. I mean, honestly, places like Afghanistan are safer than some of our inner cities.

In case you didn't recognize the voice, that was Donald Trump, the Republican candidate in this year's US presidential election.

He was speaking at a rally earlier this week, but it's not the first time he's made the claim.

You can go to Afghanistan, you can go to war torn crunches and you will find that it's safer than being in the middle of some of our inner cities.

It sounds pretty far-fetched. Yes, there are problems with violence in America's big cities and, of course, even one death is one too many for the people affected.

But do they really compare with Afghanistan where both the Taliban and IS are operating?

Let's just take this claim at face value and see if we can find a very basic measure for safety in the two places.

Because of the chaos in Afghanistan, reliable statistics are hard to come by.

But we can make a very rough estimate of the rate of violent deaths in the country.

According to the UN, in 2015, armed conflict was responsible for around 3,500 civilian deaths.

In reality, these figures are likely to be underestimates.

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