A familiar horror reached Pooja Kanda first on social media: There had been a sword attack in London. And then Kanda, who was home alone at the time, saw a detail she dreaded and knew all too well.
A man with a sword had killed a 14-year-old boy who was walking to school. Two years ago, her 16-year-old son, Ronan, was killed by two sword-wielding schoolmates while walking to a neighbor’s to borrow a PlayStation controller.
“It took me back,” Kanda, who lives near Birmingham, said about Daniel Anjorin’s April 30 killing in an attack in London’s Hainault district that also wounded four people. “It’s painful to see that this has happened all over again.”
In parts of the world that ban or strictly regulate gun ownership, including Britain and much of the rest of Europe, knives and other types of blades are often the weapons of choice used in crimes. Many end up in the hands of children, as they can be cheap and easy to get.
The homicide rate in the US is about 6-7 times that in the UK per 100,000 population. I’d take our situation any day of the week.
Last time I looked into this properly, knife crime in the US was actually roughly the same frequency as that in the UK. The difference is that knife-based murders stand out in the UK, whereas in the US nobody pays attention because the problem is dwarfed by the much greater problem of rampant gun crime.
But if the rate of knife attacks are currently the same, then logically it would make sense that knife attack rate would be much greater in the US than UK if guns were to be banned because some percentage of the current gun crime rate would convert to knife crimes. I guess the US is just a more violent place in general.
Just turn on the tele. In Europe there is a shocking amount of nudity to an American, and in America there is a disturbing amount of violence to a European.
Yes those are both true. What’s your point?
My point is, you don’t even need to look up the stats to see that it is true, just turn on the TV. Entertainment and media is a reflection of culture.
The mass stabbing in Australia the other week had a victim count that wouldn’t even make national news in America, but in Australia it was so bad that the pope commented