Well Monsieur Wisyeeweeg, as gnu says the "poor in the U.S. don't equate to the poor in the UK" ... and that is a given. Britain's war on poverty is much more effective than the U.S.(Britain being a more politically socialistic in it's approach). An offshoot of the large population of the poverty in the U.S. is the formation of gangs. Gangs are the only way out for many. From what I can gather 60% of all gun murders in the U.S. are gun related. One can also say this 60% is a probably directly related to drugs.

So .... if 60% of the murders in the U.S. is gang related (and bear in mind the much larger population of the poor in the U.S. as compared to |Britain) this would mean 2.82 % of the total U.S. ratio of that 4.7%. This would reduce the amount of murders in the U.S to a ratio of 1.88 (somewhere in the same ratio as Western Europe)

From this I would say decriminalization of drugs would probably have a greater impact on decreasing gun violence than arguing about gun legislation (though personally I would like to see some sort of gun control also). If the U.S. had more of a socialistic approach in governing it's population this would also have an impact.

Gun crime will also rise in Western Europe as we see more and more of government austerity programs. Poverty will increase and along with that is the hatred, fear and intolerance of minorities.

As per the horrific tragedy of mass murders in schools and such ... well I have already alluded to this in previous posts.

biLL