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BBC: Despite widespread gun ownership, America is a peaceful place
Let's take a ride on the double-decker clue bus . . .Despite the fact there are more than 200 million guns in circulation, there is a certain tranquility and civility about American life. . . . . . . A British man I met in Colorado recently told me he used to live in Kent but he moved to the American state of New Jersey and will not go home because it is, as he put it, "a gentler environment for bringing the kids up." This is New Jersey. Home of the Sopranos. Brits arriving in New York, hoping to avoid being slaughtered on day one of their shopping mission to Manhattan are, by day two, beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. By day three they have had had the scales lifted from their eyes. I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns. "It seems so nice here," they quaver. Well, it is! . . . And this is Manhattan. Wait till you get to London Texas, or Glasgow Montana, or Oxford Mississippi or Virgin Utah, for that matter, where every household is required by local ordinance to possess a gun. Folks will have guns in all of these places and if you break into their homes they will probably kill you. They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London. It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquillity and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream. What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime. Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken. Posted by: Mike 2008-04-27 |
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