Not to hijack this thread, but wow!!! ... I'd never seen the country-by-country rates. Any idea why the U.S. homicide numbers are so much higher than other 1st world countries (in Europe, Japan ...)?

A search on the web shows that these rates pretty much hold regardless of weapon (looking just at pure homicide rates).

The so-called 3rd world countries can have up to 3-5X that of the U.S. for the homicide rate, but still ...