[crispinb]

I'm assuming you're referring to the US, in which case it's worth bearing in mind that your nation's violence rates are often well outside the norm amongst developed nations. I can assure you the only relationship I (or friends & family) have ever had with murder is via TV. I did have a friend who had been raped during a home invasion, but that was during a visit to the US.

If I had to install special security equipment and arm myself with a machine for making holes in other people to 'feel safe', I'd rather move somewhere with a more peaceful culture if I had the option.

[crispinb]

Too late to edit, so just to add: I'm well aware that the US is huge, regional, and diverse. The aggregate figures cover over much of importance, which makes it hard to compare as a whole to other individual nations. There are of course American communities as peaceable as anywhere else in the world.

[homonculus1]

Yes, we have extremely violent subcultures that are not present in Europe. But I don't want to uproot my life and abandon my friends, family and country. I just want the option of defending myself.

[crispinb]

I don't believe "violent subcultures" is quite the right way to put it. Violence is a deep part of US history, which its mainstream culture vaunts & clings to. In some ways, I believe US culture has a kind of love affair with violence, and can't quite bear the thought of just letting it go. Peaceability is always and everywhere hard to achieve to various degrees of course, but in the US there is a strand, broader than in most of modernity, which doesn't find it desirable at all.