America: The land of the brave and afraid.
The last few days have been an eye opener for me. When we think of violent crimes, such as shootings or stabbings, we often think of chaotic lands like the Middle East or of thriller movies. However, here violent crime seems to be unbelievably prominent.
In my first week in Seattle I:
- stayed in a house where a father had killed himself trying to prevent the suicide of his son, who committed suicide anyway immediately after his father's death.
- door-knocked two houses right beside one another where there had been four murders in the last two years divided between the two.
- met a woman whose son had been stabbed outside her home just about a month ago.
Maybe, I've just been "lucky" to run into so many examples of violent crime, but statistics indicate otherwise. In the United States there are more guns than there are people. From 1960 to 1996 the violent crime rate in the United States has increased by 313%. Every year 1 in 20 Americans will be the victim of a violent crime.
As a matter of fact, the situation has gotten so bad that many European countries now send their military surgeons to the United States to practice working with war-like injuries in areas such as New Jersey, Detroit and Los Angeles.