Killer figures from the US
From Robert Walls
Sir: The recent tendency for the British press to admire the American system of law enforcement puzzles me. Allister Heath (‘The mean streets of Britain where life is as cheap as food’, 7 October) describes a UK ‘epidemic of gun and knife crime of such intensity that one murder or attempted killing simply melts into another’ and goes on to say that ‘Americans know that crime can be tackled and they expect their politicians to do so’.
In 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available, 163 people in the UK died as a result of shooting, criminal or otherwise, while in the US 30,136 people were shot dead, including 12,267 as a result of criminal activity. British society is certainly much more violent than it was 30 or 40 years ago, but the US is one of the last places to look for a solution to the problem.
Robert Walls Camberley, Surrey
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