Does anyone have the rate for england before they started banning guns way back when? I would be interested in knowing what the rate was for the US at that time as well. I suspect that they have always had a lower rate than us (different society, different people), and that our rate over the years is no different in it's change than theirs. Don't know where to look for statistics.
The figure I've seen (don't know source) is that in the late 1890's, there were only 4 gun-related homicides in London per year (w/ 4 million population).
Also, although England's murder rate is only one-sixth of America's
England's murder rate is increasing, while the United States murder rate is decreasing.
There is an important point here that many people fail to see. The murder rate in England now is 50% higher than a century ago when guns were unregulated and everyone had them. It is one of the best arguments against gun control in England. At the beginning of the 21st century nobody has guns but murders are substantially greater than the beginning of the 20th century when everybody had them and you could carry them anywhere. Ironically, they decided to regulate them to keep the socialists/communists from fomenting a revolution in the 1920's. Talk about short-sighted, and it clearly didn't do much to stop the socialists...