Overall homicide rate per 100,000 pop.
England & Wales 1.45
United States 8.55
After researching one statistic on one page of wikipedia for about 35 seconds it would seem we either have a higher percentage of homicidal folks in the USA, gun availability does matter, random internet statistics don't tell the whole story, some other variables (standard of living, industrialization, political climate) change things dramatically, or our societies are a lot different than I thought.
Maybe if it were 5.9 times more likely you would be murdered you'd want to own a gun too.... (I own 2
) conversely if I lived in a society where guns and homicide were less common I probably would not care if I owned guns or not (ok, shooting targets
is pretty fun).