Thanks for the clarification, Canine; I think my "knowledge", such as it is, has been assembled from dribs and drabs of news (and other countries' news may not be as bad as it is here in the UK, but I should know better than to not question it) and various comments picked up here and there which tend to be quite politically motivated. Plus my assumption that Starsky & Hutch was a documentary and that all of the US was like that!
And yeah, knife crime. Plus I dunno if gun crime has significantly reduced in the UK either: my understanding is that it's actually increased slightly after the last few pointless attempts to tighten it up because not surprisingly the trade in black market guns that entered the country illegally and were thus never legally held was not affected by laws that affect legally owned stuff. We did have a police officer round here who was actually armed, though just with a pistol (they usually carry sub-machine-guns if they're armed).
