jusris,

You are aware, I take it, that police powers in Britain differ from what is permissible in the United States, especially as they pertain to arrest and detention of suspects and the probable cause required to conduct a search of a suspect's home or property?  This is just a tiny example of the perils of comparing different societies, where unlike sterile physics lab types of experiments where you may have a full accounting of variables, societies differ in myriad ways, subtle and not so subtle.

And we don't need to cross national boundaries to see this play out in microcosm.  Take our much maligned city of Chicago (or, if you prefer, Baltimore, Washington D.C. or New Orleans).  All its citizens are governed by the same (gun) laws irrespective of where they reside within the city limits.  Yet the rate of crime involving firearms, including of course murder, differs drastically neighborhood to neighborhood and even street to street.

Understand the flaw of generalizations now?