here is a report from 2002, regarding the years up to 1998. Do a search for firearms and it will bring you to the pertinent data (Tom, This will also break things down by race: white black, and an 'other' catagory)

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statab/hist002_2.pdf

----------------------1994---------1998----decrease%
===================================
accident-----------1,356----------888-- 34.5%
suicide------------18,765-----17,424-- 7.2%
homocide--------17,527-----11,798-- 32.7%
undetermmined----518----------316-- 49%
total-----------------38166-----30426-- 20.3%
w/out suicide-----19401-----13002-- 33%

so thats pretty nifty. And most data suggests that it has fallen even more since!

it even works out to your numbers, using about 260 million for 1994 per capita is 14.6, (slightly off by 0.4 because I had to guestimate 1994 population because my chart started at 1995 an I really don't feel like spending any more time searching) solving for 270m people in 1998 it is ~~~ 11.2!

now what we really should do is not consider suicide. If someone wants to kill themselves its not the guns fault. If someone wants to die, they can find a way, either pills or tall buildings or the freeway, or they could be creative and go for a darwin award.

so we are most likely not the highest ranking one anymore, I'll let you find the rankings on other countries if you want, but I doubt the trend is worldwide. And even this data is six years old, its probably dropped even further now (data up to 2002 that I cited earlier strongly suggests this as well, perhaps we are somewhere around 9.0 or 8.0, a little bit above european countries)

BTW: At what point must it drop to before you consider there not to be a large problem? Do you think it is a large problem in germany? Worldwide?

I will admit the problem is 'real' and was large, but does not pretain to me because I am not in an inner city gang, nor do I plan on committing suicide any time soon. What DOES pretain to me is that people want to take my gun(1) away because gangs are killing each other and stupid people are killing themselves. I don't see this as a valid reason to take away what I see as my second amendment right. And I don't see it as a valid reason for other people to be scared and want to take my guns from me.