“Oh my!” George Takei is right!

@wildbill83 If you look at the overall figures for 2019, the UK population was approximately 67,530,161 (https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2019/) compared to the US at 329,064,916 (https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2019/). Taking the figure you presented of 285 knife deaths in the UK in that year, we have a figure of 0.422 knife deaths per 100,000 head of population.

Homicide by firearm in the US in the same year totalled 14,414 (https://usafacts.org/data/topics/security-safety/crime-and-justice/firearms/firearm-deaths/), giving a figure of 4.38 firearm homicides per 100,000 head of population. That does not include suicide or other firearm related offences. I believe the UK figure includes all deaths by knife which will probably include any sharp implement including broken bottles, [i]etc[/i].

While London may have had its worst year since 1945 and had a greater murder rate than New York, that only tells a very small part of the story. Taken as a whole, the firearm related murders in the US during 2019 were proportionately far higher than the knife related murders in the UK in the same year.

@Bushranger the populations of both are similar. The articles talks of a couple bad months. Murders in London don’t approach any substantial US city.

@DailyFlash That's why I compared the the per capita numbers of the overall population. Whichever way you cut it, the US has far more firearm related murders than the UK has knife related ones. But the population of the UK is substantially smaller than that of the US.

@TexChik so why are we the only first world country with this problem?

@DailyFlash I have no Idea, but those that want to kill or harm children should be executed.

@Carissimi maybe you should care about living children too.

I see. A newborn (or one about to be born) is not a living child in your view. Very telling about who you are. @DailyFlash

@MarmeeMarch they call it “the school to prison pipeline”.