I think this is underselling the issue a bit. I lived in Hyde Park and heard shootings on a monthly basis, had a friend shot in an attempted robbery, and in general had a visceral sense of ongoing gun violence around me that I've never had in NYC, SF, Dallas, Austin, Seattle, or any other major American city where I've spent a lot of time.

Sure, Hyde Park is a bit of an anomaly in terms of being both highly violent and having things worth touristing for, but 'any large city has neighborhoods like that' doesn't ring true for me.

What about being robbed, assaulted or someone breaking into your parked car?

They're not probably going to kill you. They're going to just take your shit, maybe beat the shit out of you or knock you out if you resist. In my case, I managed to call their bluff and they did not pull the trigger, I punched them and then managed to narrowly get away.

If you live in these rough neighborhoods are you going to call the police, have their jacked up corrupt policeman show up, basically releasing a wild hyena in your home with access to secret torture sites[0]? Just to hear "sorry for your luck, we can write a report and then do nothing about it, but maybe open an investigation on you."

No, you're going to buy a gun/knife, spend some time at the range, be ready for next time, and go on with your life. This shit doesn't show up in the statistics like it would for podunk town.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility

There are specific patterns (albeit probably not as strong) to deaths in car accidents. Why ignore one and not the other?

The US firearm homicide rate is higher than most other countries everything homicide rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

US: 5.763/100k (of which 3-4/100k are firearms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...)

Germany: 0.823/100k

China: 0.502/100k

> Globally, the U.S. ranks at the 93rd percentile for overall firearm mortality, 92nd percentile for children and teens, and 96th percentile for women.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/2024/oct/compa...

We are absolutely abberant if you chart it (the one titled "No Other Rich Western Country Comes Close").

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/upshot/compare-these-gun-...

Your chronological snobbery reminds me of a similar blindness that modernity has for the "women and children first" policy when the Titanic was sinking. When they made the movie, the director deliberately altered the story because he believed nobody would believe the truth. Yet the truth is, women and children were a whole lot more likely to survive than men, indicating that policy must have taken place[1].

The reality is, if you read first-hand accounts of the west, you see an incredible optimism, an incredible amount of sacrifice and an incredible amount of shared community on the west. That is so alien to our modern culture, where most people know a prophet of doom and gloom, people think that "community" is something you can purchase with a membership or find online, and conspiracy theories (real and imagined!) are a constant hot topic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_children_first#20th_...

I agree with your comment, and also agree it's not exactly the same situation. The romanticization of the Old West is much closer to the current political climate in the US. There's also the baggage of the "Lost Cause" that still permeates their politics, sadly.

It was mostly a nitpick, I just wanted to point out this kind of misguided fascination for old history has also impacted the Roman Empire, Sparta (which I mentioned because there's a kind of rightwing admiration for "Spartan values", which is hogwash), etc.

https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...

While the Spartans weren't a disaster, and in some respects they were marginally better (but in others, worse), the statistics don't lie: they had an average track record, certainly not on par with their current reputation. They didn't excel at any particular strategy, they were just hoplites like every Greek at the time. Their track record is disappointingly average:

> We get 12 victories, 11.5 defeats and 0.5 draws

Hardly impressive, right? And this is excluding naval battles, if we include them the Spartans do slightly worse.

> Sparta had a formidable military reputation, but their actual battlefield performance hardly backed it up. During the fifth and fourth centuries, Sparta lost as often as it won. Spartan battlefield tactics were a bit better than other Greek poleis, but this is damning with faint praise. The spartiates themselves were mostly like every other group of wealthy Greek hoplites. But the Spartan military reputation was extremely valuable – the loss of that reputation during the Peloponnesian War does much to explain the rough decades Sparta would experience following its end.

He also explains Sparta was also a self-defeating, ever-shrinking society, which ultimately proved to be its demise. But you're not disputing this, so this is just a side note.