Thanks for the linksQuiksilver said:For the year 2005.
Australia - http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/productsbyCatalogue/669C5A997EAED891CA2568A900139405/
USA - http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
Home invasion, burglary, property crime:
Australia - In total, 488,200 households were victims of one or more of these selected household crimes, equating to an overall household victimisation prevalence rate of 6.2%.
USA - (10,174,754 incidents / 296,507,061 population) x 100 = 3.43%
Violent (armed robbery, sexual assault, aggravated assault):
Australia - In total 841,500 persons aged 15 years and over were victims of one or more of these selected personal crimes, equating to an overall personal victimisation prevalence rate of 5.3%.
USA - (1,374,005 / 296,507,061) x 100 = 0.46%
(Note how Australian statistics are hard to find and source, leaving generally only one government source that is in coherent form. I have no doubt that even the Australian numbers listed here are 'cooked' a little bit, due to the reporting disqualifiers in recent crime standards guidelines. These new 'standards' came in to effect shortly after the spike in violent crime following the handgun confiscation program of 2002 after the Monash Uni shooting. It does not help to politically lose face, due to the failure of the program and underlying philosophy that law abiding citizens are safer without their firearms, so one must change the way in which crimes are reported to disqualify a certain number of crimes committed for various reasons.)
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Regarding your second point, it has happened before and happens all the time, generally in more corrupt nations. Is it possible in America and other western nations? Yes. Has it happened recently? Who knows. Unless those who sanction such acts come out and say "I did it", we'll never know.
Whether or not it is to violate your freedoms or to carry out shady foreign policy under the guise of "end justifies the means", it does have precedence in your government:
Operation Northwoods.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf (Page 8, Section 4)
You sound pretty passionate and well informed. Are you a law student man?