I look over the Atlantic and i see enormous amounts of violence and brutality,why?,I ask myself.I look around my country where guns laws are tight,police are lightly armed and venturing out on a night is safe but for a few locations…what ways ahead are there to effectively reduce the escalating turbulence that in ever present in the US?
Please forgive me i’m English!
Why do the English have cake decorators who rape and murder (and not necessarily in that order, either) children?*
Oh, my mistake. I thought you deemed it okay to generalize about an entire nation from limited observation.
*For your reference: I am referring to the crime related in “The Blooding.”
U.S. population is very diverse. I doubt very much that the crime rates amoung white U.S. middle class is significantly higher than white British middle class.
My observations are not that limited,i saw the news every day for 4 weeks whilst visiting California and violence and shooting nearly always made the headlines.
I’m not generalizing,or at least not trying too!..what about all the mass shootings that take place?,surely action should be taken to curtail these happenings?,and quickly
Please forgive me i’m English!
Because we’re all descended from rebels and revolutionaries, and we’re all rootin’, tootin’, six-gun-packin’, gangster cowboys who like nothing better than exploiting small countries and occasionally starting wars just for the hell of it (or maybe just to boost the approval ratings of the incumbent).
At least that’s what some furriners think.
The more I think about this, the more it irritates me.
Jesus’ blinkers! Uncle Sam has done more to promote peace, ease hunger, resolve disputes, and generally provide hand outs to the world than any other country…probably more than any other 10 countries.
Leave us alone.
Or suffer the consequences. 
I agree with you!,but what have you done for yourselves?..the US pretty much controls world peace,i have little doubt in my mind on that issue.What about peace within the states?
Please forgive me i’m English!
It seems that the United States is a rather violent place to live, if you judge by what you see on the news. But, IMHO, the whole world is a rather violent place to live, with some places being much worse than others. I certainly wouldn’t want to live in Chechnya right now, or in Indonesia, or the many other places where warring factions are busy murdering, raping and pillaging.
However, we do have one advantage over you blokes in England…at least we don’t have to put up with those damn French tourists
Shadowfox
“We are what we pretend to be.”
I think there is peace in the U.S. You’re comparing the UK, (a country smaller than the size of Oregon), to the third largest country in the world! It’s like any other country, within reason. The smaller towns enjoy a friendlier atmosphere, whereas in more populated areas, there is more violence.
I think I’m insulted.
Enright3
It’s not a generalization. The US has 4 times the murder rate per capita (note: per capita!) of Canada.
I often wonder about this myself, however if you look around the world, we aren’t the most violent.
Our news stations tend to grasp the violence because it makes ratings go up.
There are many peaceful people in our society. Just last night, thousands of people gathered in downtown Colorado Springs for a holiday parade. It was peaceful and people enjoyed being with one another.
For the most part, you can gather 70,000 people at a football game in our country and have it be a friendly competition without the violence that many countries have at their soccer games – the sport known as football in many places in the world.
We are a nation of people with highly differing views. Gang violence, IMHO, is started by poverty, drugs and those with terrible parents. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Most of the guns that are involved in the crimes you saw are illegally purchased or stolen. No amount of gun laws will keep guns from criminals, those laws will only restrict the law abiding people that have the constitutional right to protect themselves and their families.
Tis my view.
opinion - a belief held often without positive knowledge or proof.
oppress - to burden harshly, unjustly, or tyrannically.
don’t oppress my ability to have an opinion
Hmmmmm maybe you should come live in the States for a bit and do research on that subject. I think I could find a place for you to stay…a place with some whips… some handcuffs…some blindfolds… oh wait that wasn’t the kind of violence you were speaking about was it. =)
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing, does the painter do good
things.” --Edgar Degas
Hi Purple!
What you’re saying is true, we have more violence, more wierdos, more diversity (but I haven’t seen stats on this, I know Britian becomes more and more diverse each year) and our crime stats are so much worse than UKs.
Women in my univ class went to Ireland and thumbed their way around 90% of the time. They couldn’t do that here, wouldn’t think of it.
Sad thing to see, isn’t it.
Hmm. I live in an area containing just under a million people, and every night the entire news broadcast is about who was shot, who did the shooting, who robbed someone, dead bodies found etc etc, the list goes on. It has reached a point where I just simply watch the weather and turn the rest off. In past years I have lived in Orlando, FL, which is known as having the highest tourist crime rate in the world, or close to it, and Charleston,SC which is another tourist trap.
Now I have to agree we do inded have a lot of crime, but you should view it as case by case, not generalizing the US as a high crime country.
Someone responded that the US is the third largest population in the world, that needs to be taken into consideration. The more apples there are the more bad apples can be found in the bunch. I don’t oppose guns nor do I promote guns, so I can’t say anyhting about the gun laws that we have. However I do believe that a truly determined individual will either find a way to fet a gun no matter waht restrictions or simply kill without one. I mean you can just as easily kill someone with a kitchen knife as a gun.
Just my thoughts though.
We also have less in the way of large scale political violence. Yes, we did have the Federal Building bombing a few years back; but the impression I get of IRA attacks makes suggests that we’re talking about a whole order of magnitude.
Generally, we also seem to have fewer riots, (much fewer than the French); as for mass deaths & rioting at soccer matches–the US has nothing like that.
Our society is more violent, but the difference is not quite as distinct as it may seem on the news. After all, the news only gets watched if it’s sensational.
PS-- the small Southern town I live in is a very peaceful place, ecen though it is a university town. You might like it, Purple Toenails.
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I’ll have to agree with most other people on this one. For one, we have a greater amount of diversity. This helps generate crimes regarding race, religion, and other “hate” crimes. We also have a greater population and most of that population is stuffed into metropolitian areas. I don’t know if you can use “per capita” as a true model because if you toss 50 rats into a 10’x10’ box, you get a different result than tossing 500 rats into the same box. Saying “1 death per 20 rats” doesn’t count for the same.
On the other hand, I won’t deny that we do have a higher crime rate and I feel that (A) A great number of firearms and (B) The capitalistic mindset has much to do with it. People are more concerned about themselves than others and tend to put themselves first. I dare say that in my visits to European cities, I met a greater majority of friendly people “per capita” than I have in some US cities (though I met my share of jerks in both as well).
Not that I’d trade living in the US though.
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
I’ve lived in and around the second largest city in the USA for the last 36 years. The local news bears no resemblence whatsoever to my personal experience. Even if 100,000 people in greater Los Angeles were to experience violence in the course of a year that’s less than 2% of the population. With the exception of my sister, who was once beaten up by a boyfriend, neither I nor any member of my family has ever experienced any form of personal violence. Violence is neither normal nor does it come natural to 99% of Angelinos. That is why the Rodney King beating and the subsequent 1992 riots were so momentous in the history of LA. We are not used to that kind of brutality.
I have only seen two bar fights in my whole life. One was in England and one was in Ireland. I’ve seen Spanish soccor fans chased through the streets of East London by jackbooted skinheads. Whenever I visit London I always notice that there are no trash recepticals for fear that bombs might be planted in them. In Sicily I had to take a five mile detour over roads usually reserved for goat herds because a 500 meter stretch of the main highway had been blown up by the Mafia just so they could kill a judge. In Ireland I was constantly urged to abondon plans to visit the North. I read about institutionalized police brutality in France, England and Israel. I read that torture is still legal under some circumstances in Italy. I read about Turkish businesses being burned and bombed in Germany and police sanctioned drug killings in Mexico.
I don’t let any of these things color my opinion of the people who live in these countries. Not every Scotsman with a shotgun is a child killer and not every American is a rootin’ tootin’ gun nut.
I feel safe here. I can walk after dark in all but a handful of neighborhoods without fear for my personal safety. The media has a huge population to draw from for it’s 30 minute bloodfest.
PS-I’m sure Matt already knows this, but the reason for the disparity between Canadian and US murder rates is largely due to the availabilty of guns in the US (which is, I’ll admit, shameful).
I refer you to the International Homicide Rate Table at http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvinco.html
Note that the homicide rates in the US are substantially lower than several other nations with lower populations. Note also that, despite nearly 50% of US households owning guns and a population 5 times that of England, the US homicide rate is in proportion (4.8 times higher per 100,000) to its greater population.
For an even more enlightening look at violence, observe the International Violent Death Rate Table at http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvintl.html
Funny how no one complains about what a violent nation Finland is. Anyway, the stuff that gets on the news is the stuff that’s lurid and calculated to shock and entice viewers. It ain’t representative.
Whoa, Ursa, elaborate: what’s shameful about being able to own a gun?
Okay, Purple Toes; talk to us about the soccer hooligans from the UK. That’s representative?!