How the Price of Ammunition Has Changed Each Year Since the 1970s
The United States is in the midst of a period of historic inflation. The average price of goods and services was up a multi-decade high of 9.1% year over year in June 2022. And…
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Sam Stebbins
The City in Each State With the Highest Poverty Rate
The United States has one of the worst child poverty rates among wealthy, developed countries – and nearly 12.6 million children and youth under age 18 live in households with poverty level incomes. Not…
The 40 Countries With the Highest Military Expenditure
For the seventh year in a row, global military spending increased in In 2021, exceeding $2 trillion for the first time. This information comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, independent…
The 25 Countries Spending The Most on War
The United States has the world’s largest military budget by a wide margin, spending over $800 billion in 2021, which accounts for about 38% of global military spending. While the U.S. defense budget is…
The 25 Countries Exporting the Most Weapons
Russia is one of the world’s largest sovereign exporters of weapons. According to a recent report by the publication Foreign Policy, Russia’s planned arms sales to several African nations, primarily Algeria, Angola, Egypt, and…
The 15 Countries Where Gov’t Debt Is Larger Than the Entire Economy
The amount of debt accumulated by the United States government has ballooned in the last 100 years – from an inflation-adjusted $409 billion in 1922 to $30.9 trillion 2022. The last time the federal…
States With the Shortest Time to Crime for Trafficked Guns
Gun control laws vary across the U.S., and five states and the District of Columbia currently impose a waiting period on prospective gun buyers. Waiting periods mandate that a specific amount of time must…
Every State’s Worst Year For Murder
The year 2020 was a chaotic one in the United States, as well as the world at large. With the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, gun sales spiked, as did unemployment. George Floyd’s murder…
Where Trafficked Guns Used to Commit Crimes Come From
In the United States, gun ownership is a constitutional right, one that nearly a third of all American adults choose to exercise. But while most of the nearly 400 million civilian-owned firearms in the…
States Spending the Most per Person on Police
High-profile unlawful killings by police officers in recent years have put American law enforcement under intense public scrutiny. Outrage over abuses of power, most notably the murder of George Floyd, led many to advocate…
The States With the Fastest Increases in Gun Deaths
A total of 45,222 people were killed by a firearm in the United States in 2020, the most recent year of available data – up from about 40,000 in 2019, and a 25% increase…
How Many Guns Are Stolen in Each State
More than 10,000 guns were stolen or lost last year in the United States. These figures, which came from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, notably exclude the estimated 380,000 firearms that were…
The Income It Takes To Be Rich In Every State
When it comes to personal finance, what it means to be “rich” is relative. Ask the 73.3 million minimum wage workers in the U.S. the income level they consider rich, and then pose the…
How Secure Public Pensions Are in Every State
Public employee pension systems are some of the largest financial liabilities on state government balance sheets. The 50 states have over $4.5 trillion in cumulative pension liabilities combined, roughly double the total amount all…
How Many Guns Used To Commit Crimes Are Traced in Every State
The number of crimes committed with a firearm continues to rise in the United States, especially murders. Many of the guns used in these cases were reported by local law enforcement to the Bureau…
Where the Most People Have Been Executed in the United States
Richard Fairchild, who has been on death row for the last 26 years, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester on the morning of Nov. 17, 2022 – one…
The Least Peaceful Countries in the World
So far, 2022 has been a year marked by an escalation of violence and militarism in much of the world. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula, an alarming rise…
States Where Families Are Spending Hundreds More A Month Due to Inflation
Inflation – as measured by the consumer price index – recently reached its highest level in decades, topping out at 9.1% in June 2022. Though inflation has cooled slightly in the months since, consumer…
States With Most People on Death Row
More than 70% of countries around the world have effectively abolished the death penalty, including all but one European nation. The United States, however, is an outlier, particularly among developed, democratic countries, and across…
31 Billion-Dollar Weapons the US Military Will Invest in Next Year
Tensions between the U.S. and its geopolitical rivals have been ratcheting up in recent years. Negotiations with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program have stalled. China’s continued military buildup is of a size and…