The UK has a violence problem, probably at least in part due to the drinking. I feel less safe in London than LA. But it is crazy to deny that US gun violence isn't a thing.
Nobody is saying that gun violence doesn't exist (though I wonder how much is limited to inner cities in areas none of us want to live in if we have a choice).
But we're talking at cross purposes. The first post talked about violence. The second talked about violence. The third in the sequence, yours, switched the discussion to talk about homicides. Not all violent crimes are homicides.
The frequency of violence in the US is lower, but the death rate due to violence is much higher. Violence seems to be much more lethal in the US, for some reason.
Gun violence vs gun homicide is really just two sides of the same coin. Either way I don't want to be somewhere that chances of being shot go up appreciably, let alone just having a gun pulled on me w/ no shots fired.
Those statistics mean little outside of cohorts. I would wager to guess the murder rate for the class of people who visit HackerNews is 1 per 10,000,000. Being randomly murdered is not a rational fear in America.
Who's sweeping problems under the rug? I'm simply saying it's not something you need to fear, unless you plan to enter the drug trade instead of coding.
UK homicide rate: 1.2 per 100,000 persons US homicide rate: 4.7 per 100,000 persons
You are more than twice as likely to get beaten up in the UK than the US. You are around 4 times as likely to be murdered in the US than the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
The UK has a violence problem, probably at least in part due to the drinking. I feel less safe in London than LA. But it is crazy to deny that US gun violence isn't a thing.