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Comment by iLoveOncall | Hacker News Reader

There are daily stabbings in London. Often by minors.

One would think that a comparison with the UK would be a smart one to make considering the media coverage stabbings in the UK receive, and the fact that homicides in the US tend to be conducted using firearms instead.

Turns out, shockingly to me at least, that the US also has a much higher deaths due to stabbing rate than the UK.

0.60/100k residents in the US vs 0.08/100k residents in the UK.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-...

That’s almost an entire order of magnitude. And on top of that you add the many order of magnitudes greater homicides in the US thanks to firearms.

It's a people problem and we aren't allowed to and can't get rid of the people. People have poured in so much help and aid for years and it went nowhere.

What people are you interested in getting rid of?

Supporters of drug addiction and severe drug addicts for a start. Severe addicts need to be removed from society and treated medically in isolation to wean them off their addiction. The damage done to addicts by the common opioid and opioid mimicking drugs on the streets of SF is so severe there is nearly zero hope for them to consciously stop.

US governments need to scrap their existing operational model tackling drug users and adopt the Swiss National Strategy on Addiction and the four-pillar policy. There are no junkies in the streets unlike in the 1990s.

https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/strategie-und-politik/p...

https://www.bag.admin.ch/dam/bag/en/dokumente/npp/Sucht/Nati...

https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/strategie-und-politik/n...

In the UK it got bad enough that they card you when you buy a kitchen knife

But based on the gp, it sounds like public perception is misaligned with reality, at least as compared with the US.

I didn't talk about the UK, I talked about London.

Well why don’t you find London and SF numbers then.

In the meanwhile, considering the U.S. has an order of magnitude higher rate of stabbing, it’s highly unlikely that London would have a higher, never mind a significantly higher, rate of stabbings than SF.

Assigning every single knife death in the UK to London still gives a lower rate than the USA.

But we're not talking about the USA, we're talking about SF.

Only in comment threads, not actual London.

Trying to look it up I came across

>In 2017-18 there were 145 homicides in London, of which approximately 80 were carried out using a knife. There were an additional 4,793 incidents of "knife crime with injury".

which sadly does seem to be more than daily. That said living in central London I don't see any of it.

That's pretty appalling but don't forget that London is a city of 9 million people. When you have that number of people in a place there will obviously be crime. It could be argued that 145 deaths and 4,793 incidents is quite low.

Though it's way more than it was in London say 20 years ago. I'm not sure why the change really.

stabbings ≠ murders

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