And violence does not necessarily mean killing. The OECD sponsored a comparative crime survey of the developed world about 20 years ago - collecting people's personal experience of violent crime, unprocessed by the police or the courts. By far the most violent societies, on that measure, were Australia and New Zealand. The US and Canada were a long way behind, and European countries a long way behind them. But as measured by violence with a fatal outcome, then as now the US was far ahead of all other OECD countries, with Australia and NZ near the bottom. (In fact gun ownership in NZ is not all that low; but it doesn't have a gun culture and handguns are all but nonexistent).