One of the BBC's reporters who was living in the US came to an interesting revelation: despite the guns (and the homicide rate) on a general day-to-day level they actually felt safer in the US than the UK.
BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | America's 'safety catch'
A British man I met in Colorado recently told me he used to live in Kent but he moved to the American state of New Jersey and will not go home because it is, as he put it, "a gentler environment for bringing the kids up."
This is New Jersey. Home of the Sopranos.
Brits arriving in New York, hoping to avoid being slaughtered on day one of their shopping mission to Manhattan are, by day two, beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. By day three they have had had the scales lifted from their eyes.
I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns.
"It seems so nice here," they quaver.
Of course the article also mentions a US woman who was shot by her husband after the hubby used a gun to 'blast' a hole into the side of his house so he could install his satellite dish.