Posh-

The point I am trying to make with disparate per-capita rates is rural areas tend to value self-reliance, personal responsibility, common sense (an apparently uncommon virtue) and strong family ties.

Urban areas typically value things like entitlement, reliance on government, abrogation of personal responsibility and refer to "baby-daddies" with pride vice a strong extended family.

Violence in every form, not only firearm related, is a sociological issue tied to a breakdown in a societies mores, or more accurately a replacement of traditional mores with ones similar to those found at the time of the decline of Rome.

Personal indulgence above all else, instant gratification, "Do it if it feels good" are America's rallying cries now. We are satisfied with "bread and circuses", blind to what is happening to us as a society and a culture and heading rapidly downwards.