The Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia's online comments section on the story about the Colorado shootings was rather filled with bile, mostly 1) those crazy Americans sure do love their guns 2) their evil capitalist society makes them violent 3) these shootings are part of an evil plot by the gun manufacturers 4) they deserve it anyway after what they did in Libya or wherever 5) the USA is a terribly dangerous place. Didn't bother rebutting most of the arguments, but I did look up the intentional homicide rates, per 100,000 population around the world. Interesting. Selected countries: Honduras 87 Venezuela 67 Colombia 33 South Africa 32 Brazil 26 Mexico 18 Russia 12 USA 4.8 India 3.2 Canada 1.6 UK 1.2 Germany 0.8 Spain 0.7 Japan 0.3 So the US has fewer homicides than most other countries, but slightly more than Western Europe does. Now. Suicide rate per 100,000 population, selected countries. Lithuania 34 Japan 24 China 22 Russia 21 Switzerland 18 Belgium 18 France 16 Canada 12 USA 12 Germany 9.5 Spain 7.6 UK 6.9 Israel 5.8 Mexico 4.0 So if you add up homicide and suicide rates to produce a violent death rate, the US doesn't fare much worse than most places in Europe, and considerably better than Russia and places like that. In East Asia the homicide rates are very low and the suicide rates very high; in Latin America the opposite is true. Spain has low violence of both types, probably due to its being a pretty mellow and tolerant place (except for Americans, Moroccans, and gypsies). They scream and curse a lot, but don't resort to violence either against themselves or others.