Violence is driven by socioeconomic and cultural factors, not the mere presence of firearms. The statistics clearly show this, and the very same statistics manipulated by so-called "gun control advocates" irrefutably contradicts their agenda's premise when put into proper context. Worse yet, the obsession over gun control sidelines the urgency needed to address issues like poor education and dismal economic prospects for those living in the most destitute and violence-stricken neighborhoods in our country.

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Despite both nations being disarmed and having almost no "gun-related homicides," according to UN statistics*, Japan and the UK still have an astronomical gap in homicide rates. Why? A visit to either country reveals an entirely different culture, education system, infrastructure, and socioeconomic paradigm. This is why despite Japan having a much larger population, even total homicides are lower than the comparatively more violent but less populated United Kingdom - with homicide rates in the UK nearly 3 times higher than those in Japan.

According to the UN's study, which includes the most recent annual data available, Japan, with a population of roughly 130 million, had a mere 506 homicides over the stretch of a single year. Conversely, the UK, with less than half of Japan's population (53 million) had 722 homicides. The rates per 100,000 people for Japan and the UK are 0.4 and 1.2 respectively. The UK, despite being an unarmed population, and having virtually no gun violence, still has 3 times the murder rate than the nation of Japan. Those that are murdered in the UK or Japan, are just as dead as any human being murdered by a gun in the United States. And clearly, this indicates that the presence of guns, or their banning, is not a significant factor driving homicides and violence.

Pediatricians nowadays see fewer kids with broken bones from climbing trees and more children with longer-lasting repetitive-stress injuries, which are related to playing video games and typing at keyboards. Indoors is in. Outdoors is out – as in, out of favor with kids. "I like to play indoors better, because that's where all the electrical outlets are," said a fourth-grader quoted in the book Last Child in the Woods, in which author Richard Louv coins the term "nature deficit disorder."

What is nature deficit disorder? It's not a medical term, but a social trend. The term describes "the human costs of alienation from nature, among them diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illness," Louv explains. We're raising the very first generation of Americans to grow up disconnected with nature, he says, and this broken relationship is making kids overweight, depressed and distracted.

Society inadvertently teaches children to fear the outdoors, where there's traffic, nature and strangers, and feel safest inside (where, unfortunately, air quality can be 10 times worse, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). Maybe you remember playing outdoors with friends from dawn to dusk on summer weekends several blocks away from home when you were young. By 1990, according to one study, the radius of play around a house for a nine-year-old had shrunk to one-ninth of what it was 20 years earlier. Louv pointed to a recent UCLA report showing that American kids now spend virtually no time in their own yards.

Among young people who resort to violence, there exists an intense desire to regain control over their own lives. For years they've asked themselves who needed them, where they belonged, but they received no answers to those for them very important questions. In such circumstances, shooting people in public can give a wonderful feeling of power and self-confidence, because you become the one with the power to decide who lives and who dies. And then you accept the less heroic moment--dying between the checkout lines of a supermarket--into the bargain.

Among the many dirty little secrets that Feldman exposes are the phenomenal salaries received by CEO Wayne LaPierre and other high-ranking NRA officials. These generous remunerations, which place NRA executives among the highest-paid officials of any tax-exempt organization, are funded by biannual "crisis du jour" fund-raising drives, in which members are exhorted to donate additional funds to fend off the latest alleged threat to their Second Amendment rights.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Hartfield's murder conviction in 1980 because it found a potential juror improperly was dismissed for expressing reservations about the death penalty. The state tried twice but failed to get the court to re-examine that ruling, and on March 15, 1983 – 11 days after the court's second rejection – then-Gov. Mark White commuted Hartfield's sentence to life in prison.

At that point, with Hartfield off death row and back in the general prison population, the case became dormant.

"Nothing got filed. They had me thinking my case was on appeal for 27 years," said Hartfield, who is described in court documents as an illiterate fifth-grade dropout with an IQ of 51, but who says he has since learned to read and has become a devout Christian.

A federal judge in Houston recently ruled that Hartfield's conviction and sentence ceased to exist when the appeals court overturned them – meaning there was no sentence for White to commute. But Hartfield isn't likely to go free or be retried soon because the state has challenged a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision favorable to Hartfield, arguing he missed a one-year window in which to appeal aspects of his case.