5/85Percentage increase in members of Manhattan’s West Side Rifle and Pistol Range since the Goetz shootings: 30
9/86Percentage of teenagers’ favorite songs that they say are about sex, violence, satanism, or drugs: 7
Percentage they say are about love: 26
11/87Price of a.44 Magnum pistol issued to commemorate the Constitution’s anniversary: $1,295
4/88Percentage of West Bank Palestinians who said in 1986 that violence is justified in pursuit of their cause: 87
5/88Amount the South Korean government spent last year on tear gas: $15,000,000
6/88Portion of the Pentagon’s 1986 budget for weapons and R&D that was classified: 1/7
11/89Percentage of Americans who say that “lack of opportunity due to poverty” is a main cause of teenage violence: 50
Percentage who say that “rock music lyrics that glorify sex and violence” are a main cause of teenage violence: 52
2/89Number of the 41,000 applicants for concealed-weapon permits in Florida in 1988 who were turned down: 246
3/89Price of equipping a car with a pair of onion-gas spray guns, from Labock Industries in Tel Aviv: $960
8/89Amount the Pentagon spent last year to develop defenses against biological weapons: $58,800,000
6/90Tons of weapons Fidel Castro brought with him to Brazil’s presidential inauguration ceremonies in March: 10
7/90Amount the U.S. government has paid Romania since 1980 for Soviet-made weapons for intelligence purposes: $40,000,000
Estimated amount of the payment that went directly into the Ceausescu family’s private bank accounts: $8,000,000
4/92Percentage of urbanites in the former Soviet Union who say they would like to own a weapon: 53
12/93Ratio of Americans who say health care is the nation’s most important problem to those who say crime and violence are: 2:1
6/93Ratio of U.S. aid pledged to Russia to U.S. spending on strategic nuclear weapons and defense systems next year: 2:3
6/93Chances that there were no deaths from political violence in an African country last year: 1 in 8
Average amount spent on weapons by Croatian and Muslim forces each day since then: $2,000,000
9/93Number of pocket-sized cans of tear gas sold in Hungary this year by Universal Security Associates of Phoenix: 20,000
4/94Number of Married … with Children scripts about TV violence rejected by the Fox network last year: 2
8/94Amount the Pentagon will spend this year on major weapons programs initiated before 1989: $18,247,100,000
1/95Number of domestic-violence counselors the NFL sent to its teams’ training camps last year: 28
3/95Ratio of the number of black teenagers citing violence as their school’s biggest problem to those citing racism: 6:1
4/95Ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed in political violence since the signing of the self-rule accord in 1993: 2:1
7/95Percentage of Americans who believe citizens do not have the right to buy and store “large quantities of weapons”: 71
Percentage who say armed, antigovernment groups should be infiltrated “even if it infringes on their constitutional rights”: 72
7/95Estimated property damage caused in a New York suburb last spring by a man firing a slingshot from his Lincoln: $7,000
10/96Percentage change since 1994 in the number of threats of violence received by members of Congress: +84
4/97Value of surplus weapons and equipment one U.S. Air Force base lost track of between 1991 and 1994: $39,000,000
6/97Percentage of annual weapons exports that are sold by the five countries on the U.N. Security Council: 85
10/98Number of assault weapons the Defense Department gave away to foreign governments last year: 50,000
Number of grenade launchers: 10,000
10/98Number of “ Assault Recovery ” insurance policies sold to school employees in the last year: 207
11/98Number of Tomahawk cruise missiles the U.S. could launch for the price of the Whitewater investigation: 40
4/98Months after Martin Luther King Jr. publicly called the U.S. the “world’s greatest purveyor of violence ” that he was killed: 2
5/98Percentage of violent offenders in state prisons whose crime was committed under the influence of alcohol alone: 21
8/98Estimated number of firebomb-wielding live bats that the U.S. considered dropping on Japan in early 1944: 1,000,000
12/99Total number of nuclear weapons worldwide when the first nuclear test ban negotiations began in 1958: 10,713
Percentage by which the number had changed by the time the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963: +220
Percentage by which it has changed since then: -7
12/99Average number of U.S. cruise missiles launched per month during the Clinton Administration: 11
4/99Number of the Pentagon’s 9 Stealth bombers that have ever been deployed in combat: 0
Chance that a Native American woman will be: 1 in 10
10/00Number of Colt revolvers that a Texas judge repaired during jury selection in a capital-murder trial last fall: 2
2/00Days after China announced it would begin acquiring offensive weapons that it was accepted into the WTO last fall: 7
8/00Number of semiautomatic paint-ball rifles ordered by the LAPD in preparation for this month’s Democratic convention: 40
1/01Total number of hours spent on congressional hearings investigating violence in entertainment since May 1999: 16
2/01Chance that a democratic national election held last year was marred by violence or a disputed outcome: 1 in 4
7/01Signing bonus that two oil companies paid Chad in April 2000 in order to join an oil-exploration project: $25,000,000
Amount of this bonus that Chad spent on weapons, violating an International Monetary Fund agreement: $4,500,000
1/02Gallons of concentrated anthrax that Iraq has admitted to producing as a biological weapon: 2,245
11/02Number of reports that President Bush referred to on September 7 as evidence of Iraq’s nuclear threat: 2
Last year in which the agency Bush cited as the reports’ author had new information on Iraq’s nuclear program: 1998
Number of “indications” the agency had then of “any physical capability” to produce weapons-grade nuclear material: 0
6/02Ratio of the number of Israelis and Palestinians killed in political violence last year to the number of Sri Lankans killed: 2:3
8/02Price a Las Vegas filmmaker charges through his website for a film of homeless men fighting each other: $19.95
8/02Chance an American knows that more Palestinians than Israelis have died in political violence since 2000: 1 in 3
11/03Number of banks and suppliers that Gulf War veterans are suing for aiding Iraq’s purchases of weapons and chemicals: 44
9/03Number of officials who ever suggested that Iraq had nuclear weapons, according to Donald Rumsfeld in June: 0
10/04Number of its international workers that Doctors Without Borders has lost to political violence in its 34-year history: 8
Number of them killed in Afghanistan in June: 3
11/04Maximum number of rounds a semi-automatic rifle may hold to be considered legal in New Jersey: 15
Maximum number allowed by the recently lifted federal ban on assault rifles: 10
12/04Number of overseas bullet suppliers the U.S. Army contracted with last year and this year, respectively: 1,5
6/04Number of countries given weapons-grade uranium since the 1950s under the U.S. Atoms for Peace program: 51
7/04Estimated number of guns that the U.S.-led force in Haiti has confiscated since Aristide’s departure last February: 100
8/04Words the New York Times devoted last May to examining its own faulty reporting on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction: 3,082
Words the Times devoted last year to “correcting the record” after an investigation of reporter Jayson Blair: 7,102
1/05Factor by which an Iraqi is more likely to die today than in the last year of the Hussein regime: 2.5
1/05Average number of Americans injured every year by air rifles, paintball weapons, and BB guns: 22,000
2/05Cost of “The Sword,” an unmanned robo-soldier equipped with a rifle, machine gun, or rocket launcher: $230,000
6/05Year by which every U.S. nuclear weapon will have reached the end of its original design life: 2014
3/06Number of weapons that have been turned into tools for African farmers by a British nonprofit since 2001: 2,200
Number of farm implements that a rocket launcher yields: 5
Percentage of these that have been registered in any trackable fashion: 2
9/07Number of U.S. states that have added pets to their domestic-violence laws: 6
1/09Factor by which an Iraqi in 2006 was more likely to die than in the last year of the Saddam regime: 3.6