has been way too long in the US when his blog comes out with this stuff.
I think I am bound to accept that guns are a bit of a red herring when it comes to low-level violence in western societies, but I still believe there’s a case to be made that suburban American is far gentler than its UK equivalent.
Low-level violence and guns in the same sentence? Did I read it wrong? To stab someone you have to be up close and personal, to shoot them you can be 10/20/30 - 100 feet away.
This report I find mystifying - and, I have to report, so do other Brits I have met here on the slopes. Talking to a chap originally from south London but living now in New Jersey, we agreed (before seeing this piece) that one of the great pleasures of living in the US is that the underlying sense of low-level violence and nastiness so much in evidence in big English cities - and in small market towns as well - just does not exist here, or to be more precise does not exist outside certain areas.
Jolly good that you can take the time out of such a schedule to report that being rich in the US means you can get away from the violence and being poor in the UK you can’t. Justin, in his wisdom of dissing the country of his birth - not Bath, he says he isn’t dissing Bath. Then he gives a link to www.thisisbath.com - when you open it the headline is outrage at the cost of parking - now that is, I must say, scandalous! Parking is way too much - well the cost of it is, but I’ll bet on the slopes with his chums he didn’t even notice.
The wonderment of US political reporting. Tally-ho!
All Images designed by Alison Rhodes (LastingExpressions)
13 responses so far ↓
steve // March 26, 2008 at 8:44 pm
I was in bath in 1996, and some chip shop (I think he was the owner, though I question his sanity, he claimed he was affiliated witht he beatles) warned me and a friend about how violent Bath was at night….
In the US, if you took away the inner city, black on black crime, the US would have similar violent crime rates to that of europe. Problem is that the PC people are afraid to mention or address this because it relates to race. Almost all of the weapons used are illegal. I live in the DC area, and though it’s improve a lot, there are “only” 170 murders per year, and about 140 are with guns, and virtually all of those are black on black, gang, drug related type things.. need more bill cosbys out there.
Will Rhodes // March 26, 2008 at 8:52 pm
You find that the PCer’s don’t really want to address any problem - they just want all problems to go away so they don’t have to address them - ever increasing circles.
steve // March 26, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Actually I know PCers that like to make problems worse so they can feel better about themselves. The reason I mention Berkeley, is because I know people who went to Berkeley.. This one chick, she’s all for promoting ebonics, and when I asked her (she’s a lawyer) “would you hire someone who speaks ebonics?” she said, “no.” To help her sleep well at night with feel good, embracing culture, she would condemn people to working at McDonalds..
Will Rhodes // March 26, 2008 at 9:08 pm
LOLOL!
My distaste for PCer’s comes from a long, long time ago when I was attending a college in Leeds.
It must be something to do with colleges that brings about the worst in people - it used to be students would strike, and bring notice to what was wrong and they had a point. Now they just seem to be protesting about ‘Save the Post Office’.
steve // March 26, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I really don’t mind protests, until it affects me. I was taking the LSAT (Law school admission test) in Munich, Germany back in 1997, and students were loudly protesting something, some AK-47 (not the gun) thing. I couldn’t concentrate, didn’t do well on the exam, and didn’t go to as good of a law school as I could have, but then again, I was in a foreign country and didn’t have the facilities to study properly anyways.. It didn’t help things..
Will Rhodes // March 26, 2008 at 9:16 pm
The Germans can be quite vocal - but, not as bad as the French.
steve // March 26, 2008 at 9:22 pm
french accent is nice though. probably would have relaxed me rather than hearing “Wir wollen mehr!!!!! WIR WOLLEN MEHR!!!”
Will Rhodes // March 26, 2008 at 9:27 pm
HAHAHA!
Letters From A Tory // March 27, 2008 at 6:03 am
He can’t seriously be suggesting that people in America aren’t worried about anti-social behaviour and knife crime?!
ellaella // March 27, 2008 at 9:18 am
I just knew, even before checking his blog, that his slopes were the elitist, new money ones in Colorado and not the equally fine but less pretentious ones in New England.
Gawd, he’s becoming one of us…
Will Rhodes // March 27, 2008 at 12:26 pm
LOL - he is, way too much time in the US.
Nate C-K // March 27, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Will the places that the BBC reporter talks about that are peaceful aren’t necessarily rich. He’s talking about New Jersey, not Long Island. It’s true that most of the violence is concentrated in certain urban confines, and that most of those areas have already outlawed guns.
I’m coming increasingly to the conclusion that the gun thing IS a red herring. Gun crime is low in Britain but it was low before the handgun ban. New York City has always had a much higher murder rate than London, even when gun ownership was commonplace in London. (Remember that “the right to keep and bear arms” comes from English common law.) Handgun crime has actually risen in England since the ban. Meanwhile, the US has always had a high violent crime rate, but it has been dropping since the 1990’s.
I think Canada has a more effective gun policy than either the US or Britain: allow guns but track them using effective technology and information sharing. You can’t stop people entirely from committing gun murders, even on an island like Great Britain where guns are outlawed. However, if you allow guns but have an exhaustive database that makes it easy for police to find and catch gun murderers, this will have both a punitive and a deterrent effect on gun crime.
Even with such freedom to own guns, we still have plenty of knife murders here. The most prominent recent local murders I can think of were committed with knives.
steve // March 27, 2008 at 5:18 pm
I risk committing a thought crime by posting this WSJ link, but here goes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120648161243063499.html
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