I had no idea that Johnny LA was such a fervent supporter of social research. Well done, sir. The first prison where we keep passport violators will be named in your honor. 
Back in reality, I should clarify to ExTank [sub]that I haven’t picked up the book yet.[/sub]
Attacking his weakest point, IMHO, ExTank ignores the rather extensive regulations that exist for motor vehicles. Air bags alone add about $300 per car, IIRC. And of course there are license and registration requirements.
I admit that the brouhaha regarding the history of guns in America has been an embarrassment for gun control advocates.
While we’re waiting for Riboflavin to supplement his opinions with some links, I found the source of the 2000 Crime Victimization Survey data. The report is available here. It consists of a standardized telephone survey of about 2000 respondents per country. (Since homicide rates are measured in single or double digits per 100,000, I wouldn’t expect that this survey would proxy that particularly well).
I invite all posters to download the entire survey in pdf format. Let me give my interpretation of the results, at the risk of receiving tomatoes and brickbats from certain ahem posters.
From h2.pdf: Victimization rates, measured by number of criminal incidents per 100 inhabitants, were average for the US, based on the 90% confidence interval. Incidence -which measures the share of people victimized by one or more criminal events- are somewhat below average for the US.
Most of the crimes above, though, are nonviolent.
Summary by the authors of the report for the US: “Burglaries and thefts of personal property feature rather more in the make-up of crime in the USA than in other countries. Thefts of two-wheelers, in contrast, take a smaller share of crime. Otherwise, deviations from the average are not pronounced. Since 1996, thefts of personal property and car vandalism both increased in their share of all offences. This goes in tandem with a smaller share for assaults and threats.”
It appears that the US has made great progress in crime reduction over the past decade or so. Although it could still work on its homicide incidence, which remains the 2nd highest in the first world, after Northern Ireland. (Caveat: The dates in the link that I base that statement on vary a bit. For the US, the data was for 1999; other countries had data from the mid 1990s.) GunCite-Gun Control-International Homicide Comparisons
Interesting table. Note that Finland, showcased by myself on page 1, has gun ownership rates of 23-50%. I don’t know whether they allow Tek-9’s and handguns, though.
(For those who care, I found a site which purports to compare gun laws across countries: http://www.uncjin.org/Statistics/firearms/index.htm )