Unfortunately, it is a fact that the rates of gun homocide are FAR higher in the U.S. than in any other western, industrialized country. The most recent statistic I saw is that per capita, it's about 30 times higher in the U.S. than in Britain - and Britiain has a pretty high crime rate. (Those number might be a little off, because this was two or three years ago, IIRC - but you get the point).
However, the flip side of that the AVERAGE level of gun crime in the U.S. doesn't really affect me - since my impression is that a lot of it is concentrated in urban, high-crime areas. In the part of town where I live, for example, many of my neighbors don't lock their front doors or their cars. Across the river in East St. Louis, however, you may get shot at just for driving into the wrong part of town