CMV: The stupid comments about daggers and blades (and stabbings in general) in the UK is just American copium

I feel like because many people joke about Americans and guns, the rumors that float around about every UK person needing a self defense dagger and stabbings happening every second are just a comeback. What's ironic is, I see more of the knife comments than the gun comments. To be very specific about what I mean because some of you are struggling to understand the point.. I'm talking about memes implying that the UK stabbing rates are insane, any comments that UK stabbings are incredibly comment, implying that UK knives and stabbings are comparable to US Shootings, etc. This includes the super dramatic jokes that are common, like saying that people in the UK need self defense knives. A lot of you also struggle to comprehend my comments about people not even being from the UK. I'm not saying you can't have an opinion if you're not from there, but claiming you need self defense knives which is not based on anything factual and then on top of that not being from there is obviously incredibly ignorant, at least if you were in the UK that would give you something to work with, if not you should be presenting some data or at least basing it on something.

  1. Most of the people who say this don't actually know. They're just assuming based on nothing and generally do not live in the UK 2.The implication is almost always that the UK is either more dangerous, or comparably dangerous.
  2. The homicide rate in the UK is somewhere between half, and a quarter of the rate in the US. If you're gonna look this up make sure both sources use the same scaling, I commonly found that some use homicide per 100,000 while others do not https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder#/media/File%3AHomicide_Rate.png
  3. Although handguns are used in most homicides, knives and other blunt objects do take up a sizeable portion (somewhere between 10 and 20%) https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/

The reason I care isn't because I'm from the UK. It's because it's a harmful stereotype that is one of many tools to avoid progressive change in regards to the USA and issues relating to guns and violence. It's always a competition, where the goal is to look better but maybe not actually be better. So many of the people I've known to say these types of things are very ignorant and don't know much about UK culture or... anything relating to it. Me personally, I'm Canadian. I don't much stake in this, if anything my only bias is that I have many American friends.