Now, do some division. That's ~1 assault on a LEO per 2990 people in the US and ~1 assault on a LEO per 2100 people in the UK.

So assaults on LEO per capita are 26% greater in the UK.

Of course, it is also important to look at the number of LEOs in each state (in the sense of country, not US state).

From [0] there are ~686000 LEO in the US, or 1 per 479 people. From [1], there are ~123000 LEO in the UK, or 1 per 512 people.

So there are 6% fewer LEO per capita in the UK than the US, but the assaults on LEOs happen 26% more often per capita.

So how is it more dangerous in the US again?

[Edit: forgot sources! my bad.]

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191694/number-of-law-enf... Actually, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/police-and-detect... suggests 808,000 LEO in the US, which makes the per-capita LEO even higher in the US. Population data is hard.

[1] https://fullfact.org/crime/police-numbers/

Of those assaults, what impact did the police officer's gun have on the situation?

You can imagine an example where the gun is an asset - for example if the officer encounters an ongoing potentially deadly assault and then can shoot the perpetrator.

But I feel like more often the gun is a liability, an unarmed person is held at gunpoint and becomes violent - the police officer is left with the option of shooting the person or letting them get away. If they were using a batton/cs spray/taser (options available to regular British police) they then have many more options available to them.

(this feels off to me.. am I doing my math wrong?)