The situation is even improving, UK homicide rates are at the lowest level in 50 years [1].
Not to mention that the USA has an entire category of gun crime which is a non-issue in the UK.
I swear to you, London is not an unsafe city.
It was eye opening to me just how deeply brainwashed these people are. This wasn't just him parsing news events, it was his world view being shaped with the opinion that these are awful, dangerous, unsafe places, ridden with crime and poverty.
Though if you happen to tell truths, or even just satire, against certain wealthy people, then you can expect the full fury of those hurt.
I was visiting last fall with the family, left the car in the NJ side when taking the ferry to the Statue. They took the train to the hotel and I went to retrieve the car, got a front stage view of a guy using a chain to beat up a security guard at a shopping mall.
Guy had been peeing on the vehicles, guard told him to stop. He took offense at this, got a length of chain and started kicking the door so the guard would tell him to stop. As soon as he came out guy started hitting him over the head with the chain.
Police took a good 15 to 20 minutes to respond, didn't seem interested in looking for the guy. The guard wasn't interested in pressing charges.
Guy was probably homeless and definitely needed mental health but he had the capacity to plan out and execute a violent attack that could have been deadly.
Love it, hate it, it's a different mindset to the US approach and ultimatelty falls back on judges using "reasonable behaviour" of common citizens on ominbuses as a yardstick.
Also from the comment section: "knife crime, knife crime, it's ain't about knives"
You're saving that banning/ demonizing locking folding knives when almost all crimes are committed with a common kitchen knife wasnt the solution?!? I'm shocked I tell you, shocked!
Look, no one's a fan of the village idiot juggling lit dynamite on a unicycle in the packed shopping mall, and it's no good for anyone if the bad apples* aren't given a route to better things to do so Roman Law countries tend to have any old excuse laws to give cause to have people questioned as to why they're doing whatever the heck it is that they're doing .. my grandmother pulled up kids all the time like that.
The upside of such things is actually problematic and questionable bahaviour can be shunted in one direction and chefs of any colour, langauge, borough address can walk on proud and free with their knife rolls.
The downside is the watchers and guardians can get a bit enthused and selective in their choices of collar, they can develop little clique's of weirdness and corruption, and the judgy types can get a bit overly judgy about all the wrong things.
The challenge for any community is dealing with all that and having better control over the system .. takes time and focus, 'taint easy.
You did rather miss the point of why, and the devil's less in having reason to address potentially violent individuals and groups, far more in the implementations, the biases, the judgements, the feedback on appeals, community support, rehabilitations, restitutions, and that dull stuff.
> the implementations, the biases, the judgements, the feedback on appeals, community support, rehabilitations, restitutions, and that dull stuff.
What the hell does that even mean? It sounds like an AI hallucination trying to justify giving everyone a participation trophy and straight top grades to go through school even if the individuals don't actually participate or grasp the material being tought.
Reason to stop and question - in itself, not an issue.
> the implementations, the biases, the judgements, the feedback on appeals
Where the problems pile up - the biases of peace keepers, expectations baked into sentencing, resistance to review, etc.
> trying to justify giving everyone a participation trophy
that'd be your hallucination
Maybe wind back the nonsense and strawmanning?
What's your country / state or county that has shaped your outlook on all this?
Again, what is the actual expected goal in terms of limiting access to knives at all? How does this pass any kind of sanity check?
If someone wants to kill someone else, even opportunistically, the removal of knives won't significantly reduce said crime... there are lots of opportunistic weapons that can be used to kill. You cannot child-proof the world. Even reducing the surface or pointy part of knives doesn't significantly reduce the effectiveness as a weapon.
Anyone with even a modest amount of combat training can articulate and demonstrate this.
> USA, Arizona...
> we have pretty liberal (in the classic sense/definition) laws regarding gun rights here.
> Again, what is the actual expected goal in terms of limiting access to knives at all?
> If someone wants to kill someone else, even opportunistically, the removal of knives won't significantly reduce said crime... there are lots of opportunistic weapons that can be used to kill.
Also observed in the real world, if safety belts are introduced, car accident M&M improve - fewer deaths, lesser injuries. If guns and knives are regulated, shootings and stabbings diminish in number - not eliminate, just reduced in number.
> Anyone with even a modest amount of combat training can articulate and demonstrate this.
* My neighbour, here in W.Australian wheat belt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
* Kimberley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jejk-7I9Y6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmKxmxk6Gas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r10UavOenec
Is it the same with knife crime?
There isn’t really any location. Its socioeconomic. It’s young black men 16-24 who disproportionately end up dying to knife crime.
Low trust in society, few opportunities to improve economic situation, higher prevalence of trauma and ptsd, higher probability of substance abuse, low opportunity cost for going to jail, fewer good role models, worse self esteem, worse education outcomes, worse physical health, higher likelihood of being involved in organized crime, higher likelihood of depending on parallel social structures for safety and protection, etc.
Each can be cause or effect in a self reinforcing network. Picking one single root cause isn't really possible.
For instance, I was caught between a knife fight on a train, because in one hood some of the culture is it's unacceptable to play another culture's music too loud. A Hispanic guy was playing hispanic music quite loud on the train, as soon as it entered a black neighborhood a black guy informed him it was "his hood" and asked him to stop, which then escalated to both pulling out knives.
I have now learned there are certain socio-economic enclaves where culture has dictated that I must not play my music too loud or I will be stabbed to death.
As long as you don't make activities outside of the law a non-negligible source of your income or run with the crowd that does you're fine, and not just for murder or whatever, theft and all sorts of the boring "area under the curve" crime is concentrated around these people too.
People don't usually bring trouble to themselves for no reason. Don't give them a reason.
And for non-homicide violent crime, you're probably more likely to get jumped on a side street near a bar district than you are in a "bad neighborhood" unless you do something yourself to incite violence.
Europe represents democracy and rule of law- something right wing fascists and Christian fundamentalists despise.
Make no mistake we are involved in an ideological war against the US.
You don't see cockney anything anywhere there anymore compared to (and as much as you see any transitional regional identify left in) other British cities.
Homicide is on the drop in London but that's not 100% because it's safer. A huge amount is focused on deaths rather than attacks so don't fool yourself that just because they didn't die that nothing happened.
> crime which is a non-issue in the UK.
Nope. Not even close to true. Yes we don't have school shooters. Yes we don't have people exacting "justice" with a loaded barrel. But we do have gun crime and guns are used a LOT as intimidation. I wish I didn't grow up in an area where I know that to be true.
Trying to pretend there's not a problem is wonderful. And in that case I can point you to some very reasonably priced areas which must be perfectly safe and have no social cohesion issues at all regardless of where you're from...
What is more of an issue is more antisocial crime such as street robbery or shoplifting. These crimes are much more likely to be snatch and grab, with no violence involved. They still have an impact on the victims but they're not making the city significantly more violent.
[1] https://www.london.gov.uk/london-records-fewest-homicides-ye...
None of the people I've known who moved out of London did so because of crime or safety. They almost invariably moved because they could pay for a tiny place in the city and commute for over an hour each way or they could pay the same for a larger place outside the city and commute the same length of time on the train.
Yes, jellied eels disappearing is because everyone has fled London due to crime. No other reason.
That’s more to do with cost of living. Rents and house prices are insane.