Why are murder rates so high in the US.?

The USA is the only country in the world that has more guns going around than citizens, namely 112 guns per 100 people (worldwide average: 10 guns per 100 people). The actual number of guns in American households is over 300 million, twice as much as in 1968. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the NRA, that number is still rising quickly, and the NRA and the politicians it subsidizes block any effort at better gun control and more thorough background checks.

Although almost all gun buyers use the argument that they 'want to protect their families', the hard figures show that the great majority of gun-related deaths is not burglars and tresspassers being shot: shooting in self-defense makes up no more than 0.8% (so, less than 1%) of all shooting incidents. It's suicides (60% of all gun-related deaths!), accidental deaths of family members fooling around with guns, and crime that together make up 90% of all gun-related deaths.

In a situation as in the US, where litterally everyone can easily buy or borrow a gun, murder rates amazingly enough are not so high as you might think. The figure is 3.6 per 100,000 people and it has gone down steadily over the last decades. Today it is on the same level as in the late Sixties.

On the other hand, this figure is only 'low' compared to Third World countries and Latin America where murder rates between 15 and up to 65 per 100,000 are common. In most other Westerncountries however, gun-related deaths rates vary between 0.5 and 1 per 100,000 people, so mostly less than a quarter of the US figure. These countries practically all have strict gun control laws where 'wanting to protect your family' is not even a valid ground for a gun permit. Most of the guns in these countries are hunting or sport (target shooting) rifles and privately held hand guns are rare.