Slashdot Mirror

The early release and refusal to place new inmates in California is huge. According to federal statistics, California dropped 50k internments per year and are releasing early 13k per month. Just their decline alone accounts for 72% of total US reductions. Depending on the length of sentences, they may well have sent home the entire 200k 'drop' in prisoners. And other major state prison systems admit their lowering of prison sentences for drug crimes is the reason for their drops.

And the california plan seems to be raising some crimes there

"By contrast, we find robust evidence that realignment is related to increased property crime. In terms of overall property crime, we estimate an additional one to two property crimes per year on average for each offender who is not incarcerated as a result of realignment. In particular, we see substantial increases in the number of motor vehicle thefts, which went up by 14.8 percent between 2011 and 2012. (Magnus Lofstrom and Steven Raphael, Public Safety Realignment and Crime Rates in California, Public Policy Institute of California, Dec., 2013 at p. 2.)"

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

http://www.latimes.com/local/c...

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

Reference this document from the BOP. You should fully expect cries from not just the corps running many of the prisons but also the guard unions.

According to Wikipedia ISIS has around 100,000 people fighting for it. The world's Muslim population is around 1.6 billion. Therefore ISIS contains 0.006% of the world's Muslims fighting for it.

Interestingly that's around the same percentage of the US population (0.006%) who were convicted of murder in 1994 (source), so is Islam really any more broken than, for example, 1994 America?

That's how many soldiers ISIS has, where did they get money for weapons, outside support. Where are they getting rations, outside support. Where are they getting vehicles, outside support. It was 20 years ago but I don't remember a Guns for Murders program, I do remember a Jail for Murders program that still continues today. Again it was a long time ago but I don't remember there being support for murders, even congress has better approval numbers then murders. When you look at Muslim support for terror groups and their activities it is much higher then 1994 US support for murders, 32% of Palestinians support Itamar attack which was a brutal murder of 5 family members including a 3 month old. 89% of Palestinians support attacks on Israel. 20% of British Muslims sympathized with the 7/7/7 bombers, 16% of French Muslims support ISIS, 51% of Pakistanis grieved for the death of Osama Bin Laden, only 16% though the killing of Bin Laden was justified, the majority of Muslims in the middle east have positive or mixed feelings of Bin Laden. This is not a small percentage that approves of this behavior it's 25-50% of all Muslims.
sources
http://www.ynetnews.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org
http://www.pewglobal.org
http://www.pewforum.org

According to Wikipedia ISIS has around 100,000 people fighting for it. The world's Muslim population is around 1.6 billion. Therefore ISIS contains 0.006% of the world's Muslims fighting for it.

Interestingly that's around the same percentage of the US population (0.006%) who were convicted of murder in 1994 (source), so is Islam really any more broken than, for example, 1994 America?

If burglary and child abduction are as common as rape, we would be having a MUCH DIFFERENT conversation.

Apparently not... According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2008, there were 3,188,620 cases of household burglaries, another 13+ million cases of theft and 203,830 cases of rape/attempted rape/sexual assault. (www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus08.pdf) You have a study that cites 1.3 million women, which is MUCH higher (and I'm not disputing it), but still well below the number of burglaries. I'm aware that crime rates have been falling, but not by that much between 2008 and 2010.

As to being afraid of dying of exposure in the wild. Very few people actually die from that. Worst case, you stay by the road and someone will help you out. You might need to pay to get your car towed but you won't die.

As to being disgusted by the need to drive to get groceries, the local restaurants you frequent drive to get groceries... or things are delivered by truck. What does it matter if you do some big shopping runs at weekly or even monthly intervals that keep you supplied? I have an aunt that uses a specialty butcher that has deals with local cattle ranches. She gets the best beef you could imagine. She also gets fresh eggs, fresh produce, and locally made cheese.

I'm sorry... but you can't compete with that food in the city unless you're paying an arm and a leg. Most people that live in the city eat cheap food. In the country cheap food can also be GREAT food. Another of my relatives lives near an apple orchard. They can get all the apples they want for basically nothing.

As to it being cheaper for the very poor... only because they're subsidized. You take away the rent control, the EBT cards, and other crap and they could not afford to live in the city. And without that, many of the economic systems that rely on their labor would collapse... and that would mean much of what keeps the modern city viable would fall apart. Those same people would probably be a lot happier in small towns where they could at least feel like they are a part of a community rather then just a number in a machine.

As to crime being lower in cities... you must be joking:
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?t...

I'm sorry, but that is 180 degrees off correct. Rural communities have the lowest crime anywhere. Suburban areas have slightly more crime and the cities have the most crime. Typically the crime rate goes up with population. Think about it... more victims and more anonymity. If someone starts doing that in a small town... very quickly everyone will simply know who you are and what you do. It doesn't work. The sort of criminal you get in small towns tends to be drifters... traveling criminals. But they're not very common.

As to why one would prefer to live in the rural area... well... you're entitled to your own opinions... but not your own facts. Your information is wrong. By all means, have any opinion about ACTUAL facts but you don't get to just make things up.

1, to the GP: RAINN says that 1 in 6 women has been the victim of rape. That's different from "will be over the course of their life". That rate is guaranteed to be higher. 1 in 6 in the "have been" category would imply that 2/3rds of the average surveyed woman's rape risk is behind them to reach the 1 in 4 figure, which is not at all an unreasonable assumption.

2. When you want to cite data, don't cite secondary sources. They tell you the name of the Bureau of Justice study, so let's actually read it. We immediately notice first off that annualized rate of rape for non-college students is 8 per 1000, not 6 per 1000, so they chose the lower figure. Being in college actually *reduces* a woman's rate of being raped. But let's just go with the lower figure. A rate of 6 per thousand over... oh, let's just say 50 years... is 1-(1-0.006)^50=26%. Now, we chose the lesser percentage (6 per 1000 instead of 8 per 1000), and the average woman lives a lot longer than 50 years, but we're again assuming a higher rate of rape in the younger years counters this. In no way does the cited data argue against the fact that one in four women will be raped over the course of their lifetime.

3. I don't know what "Ali's study" is or who Ali is, but it's irrelevant given the above. However, I will point out (and shouldn't have to) that it *is* illegal to have sex with someone who is visibly intoxicated to the point that they cannot make a reasonable decision. I'm not going to dig up the laws on all 50 states for you, but just to pick the largest state, here's California's statute. If the person is slurring their speech and can hardly walk, they're not cogent enough to consent to anything. You can't give *any* legal consent in such a situation. You can't sign over your house, you can't transfer ownership of your car, etc. And that's a damned good thing.

Note that this only applies to cases where the person has drank so much that they are visibly impaired to the point that they can no longer make reasonable judgements. As always with such cases, the courts apply a "reasonable person" standard - they're impaired suchly if a "reasonable person" objectively looking at the situation would judge their decision-making abilities as being that impaired. Being "a little tipsy" or "buzzed" does not meet this standard.

Besides, even the NYPD can't get a federal employee fired since the NYPD is a state-level agency.

The NYPD is not even a state-level agency; it's a municipal-level agency. Though granted, it is the largest such agency in the US by far[pg. 34], they are nonetheless 2 steps removed.

FYI - since Geekoid correctly pointed out my referenced data didn't include homicide, please see table 4 here which shows men are homicide victims at about 4 times the rate of women: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

table 4 if you will.

And here's the homicide data, see table 4. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

"digsbo already cited the relevant reference showing that men have more to fear from others than women do" no he didn't. He doesn't understand the context and is using a specific type of crime as all crime, it is not. For example, the paper does not include homicide.

Ok fine, since you keep cherry picking your data with "intimate partners" or "domestic abuse", here's the data for homicide, and it is overwhelmingly showing that men are many times (almost 4X) more likely to be homicide victims:

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

It's in table 4.

"digsbo already cited the relevant reference showing that men have more to fear from others than women do"
no he didn't. He doesn't understand the context and is using a specific type of crime as all crime, it is not.
For example, the paper does not include homicide. It's a report on interviewed victims, not a report of all violent crime.
Lets look at a more accurate and detail review, shall we?

" Domestic violence accounted for 21% of all violent crime."

"The majority of domestic violence was committed against
females (76%) compared to males (24%)."

"The majority of domestic violence was committed
against females compared to males"

"In 2003–12, females (6.2 per 1,000) had a higher rate
of intimate partner violence than males (1.4 per 1,000)"

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

And again, please see table 7, about 50% higher victimization rate for men: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

why do people keep saying this when it's clearly incorrect.

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...
You got a link that show contrary data?

The rate of intimate partner violence against females declined 53% between 1993 and
2008, from 9.4 victimizations per 1,000 females age 12 or older to 4.3 per 1,000.
Against males, the rate declined 54%, from 1.8 victimizations per 1,000 males age 12
or older to 0.8 per 1,000.

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

Since the data indicate you are wrong I fully expect you to apologize and use the data to change you narrative.

BWAhahahha I kid you clearly can't do that.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics:

"Males (15.7 per 1,000) and females (14.2 per 1,000) had
similar rates of violent victimization during 2010."

So you're both wrong. In the US, at least. By the way, I don't think insults on XBox live qualify as "physical intimidation," especially in such an indirect manner.

Your second paragraph is just pure bullshit. Its stereotyping and bigotry plain and simple. Try applying that logic to some other groups. "Yes, not all Muslims are terrorists, but all Americans have to worry about it since they can't tell the difference." Eating M&Ms? Really?

Please back up your assertions with some facts.

Fair enough. Please see table 7: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

A statistically significant higher percentage of victims of violent crime are male, consistently, across that survey's data.

The figures are nonsense. There are 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S.

Whoever did the sums appears to have confused agencies with police officers, since that gives $344,444 per agency.

There are about 461,000 sworn officers in local police departments, giving a revenue per officer of $13,449. Local police officers only make up 2/3 of the total number of officers in the US, so the actual revenue per officer is even lower.

instead of cherry picking just one state, why not cherry pick 30 states. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/rprts05p0510pr.cfm sure only 77% repeated within 5 years... but hell i was messed up for 20+ years and nothing worked until i was diagnosed and medicated. sure i didn't 'break' many laws and was only in police care until they could transport me to psychwards etc. and they were trying to help me. i would say they did good, because now i am stable and i'm a heavy streaming media user, rather than a heavy torrent user, now... though sometimes only torrents have things due to stupid unfair approaches to copyright... like licensing movies and tv content from separate parties and thus not having the movies available when the tv series is available... and i need to see the movie to understand how the storyline is from the tv series... (like movie 10 of the anime one piece) and keep in mind one piece has 600+ tv episodes with more to come and it doesn't make sense to just watch the anime without the movies because the movies make more sense (but except movie 10 are all non canaon of the manga or anime) if crunchyroll had the movies i would watch it there of course, but they don't and piracy is something many many people do, from radio mixtapes to vhs copying to dvd ripping most people have circumvented copyright if they had the resources to have a device but not the income to own content. so great i don't have to pirate movies because i can afford to stream them and i don't mind waiting for netflix or amazon or crunchyroll or don't mind hulu ads but when these sites only get partial content i have few options buying the movies off amazon is one possibility but at $20 a movie it then conflicts with my entertainment budget of $100 a month. anyways, i do have quite a backlog of movies to watch, and i easily spend $100 a month on entertainment so i probably sound pretty vain but i was taught that sharing is a good thing. that people are supposed to share the good parts of their life to others in hope they too lead an enjoyable life. copyright shouldn't be seen as a way to make the world a better place because it doesn't. it makes sharing a harder process and i don't always like the 'hyped' content for instance i spent $20 of my entertainment budget on the first 5 books of game of thrones(kindle edition) and have only gotten through the first chapter, so far. and if it doesn't get better it will be not very high on my list of things to do. if i had pirated the books i probably would have deleted them by now. as it is i feel obligated to keep the ebook until i finish the first book, because i know sometimes it takes authors a while to get a good storyline rolling.

Here's some discussion about what "home invasions" are:
http://www.homeinvasionnews.co...
Here are some statistics, scary? Not really, quite small numbers:
http://www.homeinvasionnews.co...

Here is one that has higher scary numbers but they try to distance themselves from terming the incidents "home invasions". Had a hard time unwinding it (it's a long article and I'm feeling lazy) but one thing that stands out is that in 65% of cases, the offender was known to the victim.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

So, I think you could make the case for rare or not rare depending on whose data you latch onto.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are approximately 6,937,600 offenders under the supervision of adult correctional systems at yearend 2012. Approximately 2.2 million are incarcerated. The remainder are on parole or under community supervision (i.e probation.) I would suggest that your 50k number is low, by at least an order of magnitude.

I want my children to live in a better world than the one that I grew up in and I don't see it happening today. [...] Candidly, I think the world is a more violent, aggressive and dangerous place to live in today than it has been in the past.

You realize this is a factual claim, not an opinion, right? Shouldn't you make a basic effort to know whether it's true or not before posting it?

Since you're talking about your own children, I'll assume you grew up in the 80s to early 90s. And since your comment focused on US culture, I'll use US crime rates since then to illustrate my point, which is that children today will grow up in a world about half as violent what you grew up with:
Violent crime, 1993-2012
Violent crime, 1973-2003
Homicide
Property crime (theft)
Even non-crime dangers are way down:
Fire deaths since 1918
Traffic deaths since 1900

Bear in mind that I'm not commenting on the rest of your post, just that one claim I quoted above. But if you care about truth more than truthiness, you should really change your tune about the violence and danger in today's (US) society.

I don't know, I'm trying to understand why what works very well in Europe doesn't seem to be applicable in the USA. Clearly there are cultural differences, I'm just not sure which ones.

I agree with you that a thief and a murderer are two different things by the way, typically a thief caught in the act will just escape (at least that's what they do here in Europe). I don't really understand your question about what is more reprehensible, since you seem to agree that criminals don't want to get shot anyway. I was more wondering about the case where people kill trespassers, which they wouldn't have if they didn't own a weapon (and they wouldn't have run a higher risk since thieves are not murderers).

According to this document "justifiable homicides" are around 300 per year, which I guess isn't that high for USA standards (although I must say it is freaking high by European standards). Interestingly, "disrupted crime", which is probably where "killing trespassers" lies, is the biggest portion of it, but it's still small compared to non justifiable homicides.

Now what's also interesting in that document is that gang-related homicides seem to be much lower than other causes like "felony", "argument", "unknown" and "other" (Figure 40). Of course that's all homicides and not only guns, but guns do seem to represent an awfully important part of it (Figure 42). Unfortunately there is no statistic in this document about how many of those involve legally owned/carried guns versus black market guns, that would be interesting. Still, the fact that gangs homicides represent way less than arguments and felony leads me to think than simply forbidding to legally carry a weapon would drastically reduce the number of homicides. My assumption is that pulling a gun in the middle of an argument, or in the middle of a crime being committed in front of them, is done by someone legally carrying that gun, but then again, I don't know the USA context so well.

Sweden, on the other hand, focuses on bringing people who have strayed from the path back into society. Their methods work. However, if anyone in the US wants to employ their methods, they are seen as "soft on crime" at worst. At best, they can't get the funding needed to enact meaningful rehabilitation programs. It is far cheaper (in the short term) and easier to put people in cages compared to education and rehabilitation.

We already tried "Hug and Release" back in the 1970s and 80s. Crime rates had been skyrocketing for a long time. Only when the mid 90s hit, and the country returned to retributive punishments with a vengeance did crime rates start falling again.

Citation:
1) http://www.bjs.gov/ucrdata/Search/Crime/State/RunCrimeStatebyState.cfm - select "United States-total" from the first list box, "Violent Crime Rates" from the second list box, leave date range from 1960 to 2012, and click the "Get Table" button.

This seems to be a pattern. Prisoners rights advocates hold sway, influence the public to forget the offenders' crimes, just look at how handsome they are, crime starts going up. Innocent people are victimized more and more, then finally, society realizes it must remove criminals from society and aggressively pursue criminals in order to lower crime rates. New York is this issue writ large. Only when it unbelievably elected Giuliani did he institute zero tolerance policies which finally brought the crime rate down. I remember the puzzled social commentators just baffled about how Giuliani's policies could possibly work. Darkly amusing.

but 8 times is absolute bollocks.

See Table 1, Bureau of Justice Stastics, Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008. Per 100,000 people, there are 4.5 white offenders, versus 34.4 black offenders, which comes out to blacks offenders at 7.6x of whites.

That sounds like a race-based belief of inferiority, no?

Not necessarily. A lot of it is statistics. According to the Bureau of Justice (PDF), between 1980-2008, 47.4% of all US homicides were committed by blacks, despite only accounting for 12.6% of the population during that time.

"Can you post links to the stats you are talking about? Would actually be interested to see them."

Here are a couple of sources. You might have to look around a bit. But really, this stuff is not too hard to find.

U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics

The DOJ kept these stats before the formation of the BJS. For earlier years, you might have to look there.

House of Commons, Firearm Crime Statistics

The latter is a .pdf. IMPORTANT NOTE: when reading the UK stats, be sure to separate out the parts that refer to air guns. Those just simply aren't considered "firearms" by the rest of the civilized world, and aren't included in anybody else's statistics.

There are a lot of gotchas when comparing stats from two different countries. For example: in the UK, a homicide is not listed in the stats as a "murder" unless someone has been tried and convicted of the murder. In the U.S., on the other hand, it is called a "murder" regardless of whether anybody is caught and convicted of the crime.

Here, let me Google that for you...

Seriously, it's pretty ridiculous to ask me to get this for you, when much of the data is so easily available and easy to find.

Those aren't the whole story, though. A lot of it is not so easy to put in a graph. Keep in mind that (A) gun control laws in the U.S., did in fact peak in the early 90s, and (B) per-capita gun ownership in the U.S. has been going steadily up since that same time.

It simply isn't possible for me to put all the data together here for you on Slashdot. I'm not going to take the time to write a book. But you might be able to find some. I would just ask that if you do read a book about it, be sure to check its claims and its statistics against the official numbers, because there is an awful lot of bullshit propaganda going around.

Here, let me Google that for you...

Seriously, it's pretty ridiculous to ask me to get this for you, when much of the data is so easily available and easy to find.

Those aren't the whole story, though. A lot of it is not so easy to put in a graph. Keep in mind that (A) gun control laws in the U.S., did in fact peak in the early 90s, and (B) per-capita gun ownership in the U.S. has been going steadily up since that same time.

It simply isn't possible for me to put all the data together here for you on Slashdot. I'm not going to take the time to write a book. But you might be able to find some. I would just ask that if you do read a book about it, be sure to check its claims and its statistics against the official numbers, because there is an awful lot of bullshit propaganda going around.

The lowest survey numbers come from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a part of the U.S. Department of Justice. They put the number of defensive uses of a firearm at about 225 per day (335,000 times between 2007 and 2011). There are other surveys that put the numbers much, much higher. http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4616

Since it doesn't matter whether the gun is stolen from the body of the hapless and under prepared gun owner or stolen form the house of the hapless and under prepared gun owner general statistics about gun theft don't need to make that distinction - the figure is 1.4 million guns over 5 years: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/fshbopc0510pr.cfm.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4616), between 2007 and 2011, people used firearms over 335,000 times to defend against crime - averages about 225 times per day in the U.S. 235,700 times a firearm was used to defend against violent crime and just over 100,000 times to defend against property crime.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics isn't the only organization that conducts these surveys. However, their numbers are the lowest of the formal surveys that have been conducted.

If this really plays out as you assert, then you should be able to use the Texas CHL statistics to back it up. Kindly pull up their conviction raw numbers and rates from 1996-2011, then take their active licensee and instructor counts from the same time period, and derive their murder rate per 100,000 population. Now compare that murder rate per 100,000 population with the FBI's pre-calculated rates for Texas and the US as a whole, and any other states you wish. Which population group has the lowest murder rate, and by how much?

The problem with guns is what they do to people's attitudes when they're perceived of as something you should own for use on other people. If everyone agreed guns are only for hunting, for instance, they could have more guns than the US and still have few issues. (As I understand it, this is the case for some countries).

I have great news! You can test your hypothesis.

The Texas Department of Public Safety tracks stats on Texas Concealed Handgun licensees. It includes total count of licensees from 1996-2011, which you can cross-reference with the overall state population. It also includes conviction totals and rates of CHL holders vs. the rest of the state across that same time period, so you get a clear picture of what proportion CHL holders make up in crime rate relative to their population.

So I invite you to review the info, and then cross-reference the crime rate and murder rate of Texas CHL holders per 100,000 population vs. Texas as a whole, with the US and other states, and any other population you wish for that matter.

Does the data support your hypothesis? Does it contradict it?

In the US, there are about 30,000 people killed each year in motor vehicle accidents (10% of those motorcycles). This has been steadily decreasing, implying that cars are already getting safer every year, in spite of the fact that people are driving more and more (about 3 trillion miles last year in the US).

About 11,000 people are killed each year by firearms. This has been increasing since 1999.

While I agree that self-limiting guns are currently fantasy and do not address the root cause of the problem, assuming trends continue (a big assumption, I know), gun related homicides will overtake car accidents soon anyway, even without automated cars (yes, I am ignoring motorcycle accidents in this analysis). If your automated cars (which will cost trillions) do come and *only* reduce "accidents" (I agree, many preventable) by three-fold, guns will then kill more people than cars.

So for me, it is justified to ask, where do I invest money now to increase safety? As has been pointed out already, basic gun technology has changed little in the last 50 years, at least in regard to reducing homicides. I don't know what the solution is, but I suspect that for a smaller investment than for automated cars that you could design something into guns to reduce homicide rates. Since one gun is often used to commit multiple homicides, maybe just a remote deactivation mechanism or a tracking system might help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
http://trafficsafety.org/safety/sharing/motorcycle/motor-facts/motor-injuries-fatalities http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=31

Hi. Have you examined the Texas Department of Public Safety stats on Texas Concealed Handgun licensees? It includes total count of licensees from 1996-2011, which you can cross-reference with the overall state population. It also includes conviction totals and rates of CHL holders vs. the rest of the state across that same time period, so you get a clear picture of what proportion CHL holders make up in crime rate relative to their population.

If you haven't already examined those stats, I invite you to do so, and then cross-reference the crime rate and murder rate of Texas CHL holders per 100,000 population vs. Texas as a whole, with the US and other states, and any other population you wish for that matter. Then answer this: does the data support or contradict your assertion?

2007, around $74 billion was spent on corrections. The total number of inmates in 2007 in federal, state, and local lockups was 2,419,241. That comes to around $30,600 per inmate. In 2005, it cost an average of $23,876 dollars per state prisoner. State prison spending varied widely, from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana. $4,020 is the basic cost of raising each child per year as estimated by the Department of Health and Human Services for 2013, whether there is one child or many children. The total basic cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 is by their estimates $389,670, based on the 30 year average inflation rate of 3% increasing the $4,020 annual cost every year. According to Globalissues.org, "Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day." This statistic includes children. Using $2.50 a day, the cost is roughly US$900 for raising a child for a year, and US$16,500 for raising a child from birth to age 17 As per the cost of public education spending Colorado, for instance ranks ninth nationally in "quality" of education but spent an average of $9,155 per student in 2009, putting it among the 10 states spending the least per pupil. Wyoming though ranked 29th in quality spending the most averaging $18,068 per student. Alaska, ranked 41st for its education quality, spent an average of $16,174 per student. Overall, the U.S. spent an average of $11,665 per student. Prison stats Sources: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p08.pdf http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html?_r=0 http://www.pewstates.org/uploadedFiles/PCS_Assets/2008/one%20in%20100.pdf Education stats sources: http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/education/analysis-how-much-states-spend-on-their-kids-really-does-matter-20121016

Well, you say that, but do have any evidence to back up that claim? (And editorials from Fox News or Cato do not count as evidence.)

An easy task. The Brady Campaign is an anti-gun PAC that rates states in the US by how restrictive their gun laws are. The FBI has thoroughly compiled yearly crime data sent in monthly by local law enforcement. So...

Cross-reference Brady score with FBI data on violent crime and murder rate per 100,000 by state. Stretch it out over the course of 10, 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years. The data goes back to 1960. Compare them all, or compare the top 10 and bottom 10 Brady score states.

I must not have made my point clear enough. A homeowner is much less likely to actually defend their home with a gun in the states that have no castle doctrine law. Such states also tend to have much more strict gun laws. Pennsylvania is the 10th most gun-restrictive state in the US according to the Brady Campaign, an anti-gun PAC. Gun laws also correlate with lower gun ownership from state to state. I encourage you to compare Brady state scores with the FBI's data on violent crime and murder rates by state and by year.

Regarding your assertion about socio-economics not mattering...have you read this study?

Have you cross-referenced gun ownership by country vs. firearm homicide rate by country vs. income inequality by country?

Regarding your assertions on criminal behavior in the US...where is your evidence? Are you involved in law enforcement in the US? Do you have a criminal psychology background? Are there studies or raw data from the FBI, CDC, or other neutral parties supporting your assertion? Have you examined numerous case studies to come to your conclusion? Does your evidence match your confidence?

You are incorrect about Australia's statistics. The result of the gun ban is disputed, but it's generally accepted that the ban led to a large decrease in suicides, and a smaller but still statistically significant decrease in homicides. We also haven't had a single spree shooting since the 1996 National Agreement on Firearms, whereas we had 13 spree shootings (four fatalities or more) in the 18 years before the ban.

As for gang violence, gang violence accounted for 1% of all homicides in 1980 and 6% of all homicides in 2008.

I'll save you the suspense - you aren't getting it. The site exists to collect reports of defensive gun use by citizens. This phenomenon is claimed to not exist by some people, probably like you. Guns do more than protect people from other people with guns. They protect 80 year old men confronted by gangs, 89 year old women from home invaders, women fighting off multiple rapists, and enable a boy to save his family from kidnapping and sexual assault. This sort of thing happens regularly, but is often unreported. If you ban guns, then everyone is at the mercy of the strong and vicious. Things don't get nicer if you ban guns, you simply get more innocent victims. In fact, gun crime can increase. But then violent crime in much of Europe, including the UK, and Australia occurs at a much higher rate than in the United States anyway. The United States does have a higher murder rate than much of Europe, but there is some subtlety in that. European Americans commit murder at rates similar to other Europeans. Where do the rest come from? And no, the United States murder rate is not among the worst in the world, its actually in the middle overall, and much lower in many place in the US. Guns are a useful tool, make for pleasant sport, but they not magic as you seem to believe. I think you have a number of unexamined assumptions that aren't true.