London: a case study in the effectiveness of gun control.
London, England has a homicide rate of 1.1/100K. Recently, I was engaged in a discussion with some "pro-gun progressives" in which it came to light that there are no cities -- zero -- in the US that have a homicide rate that low. That's right: every single city in the US with a population of at least 250K has a higher homicide rate than London, one of the largest and most diverse cities in the world. And, in almost all cases, the homicide rate is much higher.
All cities in the US. Not just the usual suspects, like New Orleans, which has a homicide rate of over 50X (fifty times!) higher than London. But also places you don't really associate with violence. For example, Portland OR, and Virginia Beach, VA both have over 3X as much homicide as London.
Virginia Beach! The homicide rate here
is three times higher than here!
Austin, Anchorage, Corpus Christi, Mesa AZ, all have between 3X and 4X as much homicide as London. Colorado Springs and Albuquerque, over 5X. Mobile AL and Tulsa OK, over 10X. And the list goes on.
Why would this be? Well, the NRA likes to blame anything except for guns, but the problem is, London has all of the other causes that the NRA likes to point to, and they have them in spades.
For example, NRAers like to claim that homicide is basically due to inner city gangs (which is, of course, false -- only about 12% of homicides in the US are gang related). But London has tons of gangs. NRAers like to point to ethnic tensions, or some of them put it, "black people". London has enormous ethnic tensions. Not only do they have black people, but they have tensions involving Muslims, and Eastern Europeans, Asians, etc. They have Bangladeshi gangs! Really!
London has poverty. London has crime. London has all of the social ills that go along with large, diverse, densely populated cities. And yet their homicide rate is tiny, compared to any city in the US.
Why? Because the gun laws in the UK are very tight. You might get robbed, but the person robbing you won't have a gun. People get into fights, but they don't shoot each other. And crimes involving guns are many times more likely to result in a homicide than crimes without guns.
Want to save lives in America, and get the homicide rate down in line with international standards? Gun control.
= new reply since forum marked as read
If you have ever used the Underground you wonder how they endure not killing everyone else in sight 
that's one way to do it, but let me opine what would probably happen, there would be a massive turnover in the Congress and the incoming Congress would just repeal those laws, or, the SCOTUS would rule it unconstitutional and then we'd be back to square one, only now we would have a repuke admin. in power and then say goodby to ACA, women's rights, gay rights, etc.
Didn't mean to rain on your ideas. Gotta go for now, granddaughter just arrived and she wants the puter.
Be back soon. 
Clear evidence of the lethality of guns. If we had similar gun laws, we would likely have even lower homicide rates than the UK.
One caveat is that comparisons of "violent crime" suffer from the fact that it is not as clearly defined as homicide (e.g. when does an assault become "aggravated"
. But still, it is clear that the reason that the UK has a lower homicide is not that they are a less violent people, or that they have less gangs, or any of the other reasons that people try to give as an excuse for the astronomical homicide rates in the US.
