I'm not disagreeing, but there's one thing I don't understand. China has more poor people, and their poor are poorer, and their drug laws are as bad as the US's, if not worse. If the problem is just poverty and drug laws, shouldn't we see more violence in China?
It's poverty + drug laws + guns, that is the killer cocktail. You can't hardly come up with a worse combination.
China has violence, but they don't have much gun violence because 1) guns are often beyond the financial capabilities of their poor, and 2) there aren't very many guns per capita.
In the US it isn't difficult to come up with $150 if you're poor and want a black market gun. The US poverty line for a household of 1 starts at $11,500 (it goes without saying how much higher that is than most incomes in China, so the availability of cash to buy a gun for even someone that's poor is radically higher in the US).
A good example of this in action is Brazil. Their gun homicide rate is twice that of the US. They have some intense poverty and guns, and thus have a very high gun homicide rate (eg compared to China, that just has poverty but limited guns).
Also it's fair to say, to top it off, that the US has a far more violent culture in general than China, that amplifies the problem. I'm not speaking of state sponsored violence mind you.
