Osler's Razor

To me the caution in drawing conclusions from seemingly correlated public faith and gun violence is that publicly exulted faith is often times a cover for abject hypocrisy. Why is it the most appalling scandals of monumental hypocrisy come from places where religion is a publicly declared panacea universalis, places where mega churches are the only public forums? There is no correlation with an absence of guns in Alaska, Vermont or New Hampshire and in spite of being ranked as the least religious Americans, they seem to be the most living up to the faith they choose not to wear on their sleeve and it looks like when they shoot their guns at intruders, it is mostly bears or elk or whatever it is that intrudes up there.
 

Interesting article. For some reason the South has a higher rate than the midwest, northeast, or west…I’m not sure why. You did not include a couple low-murder-rate states pretty identified with religion (Utah, N.D., Wyoming, Idaho…and I’d say Iowa is know for being very religious), but more importantly, the rates for cities generally tell a very different story. In order of rate from the worst (per census.gov): New Orleans, St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Newark, Oakland, D.C., Buffalo, K.C., Memphis, Philadelphia, Cleveland. I don’t see any religious correlation there.
 

Kendall, the problem with that theory is that really no really big cities are particularly religious, and there are largely rural states at the top and the bottom of the violence rankings. I'm not sure why you think part of a state (the cities) would be more indicative of per capita murder rates than entire states.
 

Without question, the 3rd leg of the stool of faithful living compels us to act. In the Walmart case cited, the first step in addressing the ill would be learn what the "shopper's" malady was. Was he deranged? Addicted? Poor? Suicidal? What prompts a man to decide to load up a shopping cart and walk out to the parking lot without paying? So we want to act out our faiths in service. To know where to start, we have to figure out what the problem is.

I don't know, but I would like to.
 

Sorry for the delayed response. I think the city data is particularly relevant because of the wide disparity between the rates for some of the cities compared with the rate for the state as a whole. For example (from your list of the top 3 states in 2009): New Orleans had a 51.7 murder rate, while Louisiana as a state was at 11.8; Baltimore-37.3, Maryland-7.7; St. Louis-40.3, K.C.-20.6, Missouri-6.5. So what would the murder rates be for these states without the disastrous city rates? I totally agree that religion should cause people to be less violent, but I think more information is necessary to conclude any religious correlation exists.