PTT, you once again deliberately ignore the utility of prevention of violent crime by citizens who use firearms for self defense. We have had this conversation previously.
The cops can't be everywhere. Some people prefer not to be forced to be a victim.
I'm not ignoring it at all, and have addressed it previously. See
this study which shows that having a gun increases your risk of getting killed by 2.7 times. From the study:
After eliminating the impact of other variables like illegal drugs and domestic violence, the researchers found that the risk of getting killed was 2.7 times greater in homes with a gun than without them. No protective benefit of possessing a firearm was ever found, not even for a single one of the 14 subgroups studied.
You might
feel safer with a gun, and you probably want to believe that you are "safer" from being killed if you own a gun, but the fact is that you are not. The study is multivariate, so it compares [you with a gun in your house] with [you without a gun in your house] and finds that [you without a gun in your house] is a lot less likely to be killed. I'm sure you find that counter-intuitive and contradictory to common sense, but then so are many other things (think Schrödinger and you're at the tip of a very big iceberg).
I note your habit of counting the hits and ignoring the misses remains.
Accusations like that demand evidence.
As to "developed nations" I note that you deliberately white wash the following reality: nations have differences.
On the contrary, it was the differences between nations which I pointed out in US Herk's herring-ridden post.
It appears that nations having differences bothers you. Why is that?
Don't strawman, and don't deflect from the issue.
People who misuse statistics, fail to point out the biases, and otherwise misunderstand studies but are very willing to use them as evidence, even interpreting them in a manner to which they are not lent. "Lies, damned lies and statistics" is rubbish: "lies, damned lies and people who misuse statistics" is the truth of it. Sadly the way the media throws stats around leaves people with the mistaken impression that statistics are both inviolable and simple. They're not: they require context.
That, along with people who "feel" they are better off doing one thing while all the evidence suggests otherwise.