First off, world, the United States is probably not the most violent country, this charge has always been absurd. It is true that America took up the myth of the white knight, transmogrified it to the cowboy, and gave him a legal gun. Cultures that fear the hoi poloi think that foolhardy, and they ridicule us for it. Anyone who has ever traveled, spent time in the world's bars and in the world's streets, must know this. Here is the proof.
If a man slugs his wife here in Boulder, police are called and it is mandated that charges be brought. It becomes a multiple statistic, a product American culture - the home of baseball - loves. It also becomes a statistic available for Europeans to use condemning our violence. In virtually any other nation on earth, this does not become a statistic but a family or village story. The police are not called, the neighbors are not particularly upset if it doesn't happen too often. Even where this is considered a taboo, statistics are not reliably kept, because there is no financial incentive to do so except here in the United States, where police budgets are dependent upon this sort of thing. If there is a riot here on the Hill in Boulder, people are arrested, the full horror of burning sofas in the streets is documented and it becomes a million dollar project with people's legal lives in the balance.
Even in Britain, where guns are essentially illegal, there is a comparable amount of violence because fist fights outside pubs or soccer matches are not even of particular interest to the participants, much less the police. And because the world's police forces are not very good outside the United States - which is very scary and very true - a whole lot of crimes are just forgotten. If a body washes ashore in an African harbor, nobody does fingerprints or tries to trace it down beyond running notices in the local paper. They have no resources to do more. It is an accidental death off a boat, and the connection to a man seen being hustled into a car by thugs four hundred miles inland is never made. This is not a slam against Africa. But it is true.
Given that until recently the United States was one of the very few nations where lots of people could legally assemble and vaguely riot at all, it seems somewhat fanciful to consider this a sign of love of violence. Especially in the Latin countries, where ritual animal abuse, wife beating, and the more ridiculous aspects of machismo are venerated, and the corrupt governments are not so inclined to keep crime statistics beyond suspect political troublemakers, the charges against the United States are, shall we say, hollow.
