A not-bad article in the BBC news on firearms ownership

and the US. Couple of points they don't seem to get, but overall not bad.
At the moment, there is an effort being made to overturn a ban on some types of weapon in Washington DC.

Among those dead against this plan - those who claim it would turn the nation's capital into the Wild West - is a lanky black man (he looks like a basketball player) called Anwan Glover.

Anwan peeled off articles of clothing for our cameras and revealed that he had been shot nine times.

One bullet is still lodged in an elbow.

His younger brother was shot and killed a few months ago.

Anwan was speaking to us in a back alley in north-east Washington. If you heard a gun shot in this neighbourhood you would not feel surprised.
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Why is it then that so many Americans - and foreigners who come here - feel that the place is so, well, safe?
I could wish they'd noted that it's in DC, with the handgun ban and extreme restrictions on rifles & shotguns, that that Anwan got shot to pieces, and his brother killed; it's in the 'Wild West' areas that this crap very rarely happens. For the reason that- along with a better social situation in general- the good people are armed and won't put up with the crap that happens in DC.

They end with this:
It is an odd fact that a nation we associate - quite properly - with violence is also so serene, so unscarred by petty crime, so innocent of brawling.

Virginia Tech had the headlines in the last few days and reminded us of the violence for which the US is well known.

But most American lives were as peaceful on this anniversary as they are every day.
Don't you just love that they talk about A story of an inability to get to grips with violence. in the US in the same article in which they note
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.

Sounds like, with all our problems, we're not the ones showing an 'inability to get to grips with violence': we're just doing it in ways they don't approve of.