See also: how to lie with statistics. More meaningful, but still not at face value the way you seem to wish, are the intentional homicide rates: 4.8 per 100K in the US, 1.2 per 100K in the UK. You can't take these numbers at face value because homicide is not uniformly distributed in the US. It's strongly correlated with poverty, which in turn is strongly correlated with certain races and neighborhoods. Eliminate those hotspots by addressing poverty, and the US homicide rate is comparable to the UK's. In fact, the US rate for all violent crimes except homicide is already much lower than the UK's.
We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan