I pasted one of the story's public comments below, and it is brilliantly put. Bold font emphasis below is mine. I lived in London 3+ years and the crime -- even in the really nice neighborhoods -- was unbelievably dangerous and brazen. A completely different type of crime than we are used to here, because the thugs had no fear and would simply walk up and assault you in broad daylight in a neighborhood with multi-million dollar houses. They would walk down the street and throw bricks through ladies' car windows to reach in and grab their purse. We had to have bars on all the windows and the thugs still would try to pry them open and break in with no fear whatsoever.
"In America they believe it is better to suffer under too much liberty, than too little. Commendable. And to be fair, if you strip out the gang murder numbers in the inner cities, then the crime rates are quite comparable to the UK. So it seems our Yank friends are just letting their criminals off each other - brilliant! As to the school rampages, they actually seem quite rare in a country with 1/3 billion people. Guns are not the problem, mental health issues are, good thing we don't have those in the UK, right?"
