You're not supposed to whip you knife out at the first sign of trouble.
This is the problem with the gang knife crime we are seeing at the moment. someone carries a knife and because they do the temptation to use it is too much and because they do, others carry knives and they use them as well, it escalates. these are young teenagers feeling their oats, they want to prove themselves, there's also peer pressure, an age old problem. it's not symptomatic of anything else other than young males (and now young females) wanting to make their mark in the worst possible way.
When people carry weapons the first thought is often to use them before anything else. Weaker people often will use weapons more easily because they think they give them an advantage against stronger people.
it's all well and good telling us who live in countries where weapons are uncommon and rarely carried that we are somehow 'less' than those who carry weapons but because we don't we don't resort to using them as easily as people who have the perception ( mostly because it's true) that everyone has a weapon of some sort. It's a very different cultural difference. I'm not sure that people actually realise there is a big difference between the US and Europe in many things policing, laws and politics. We assume because we've known each other so long that we have more in common than we do and tend to assume that we know what life is like in each others countries so can make statements about violence, crime etc. The truth is I have little idea of what life is like in any American town, city or village so I don't tell people they are wrong about carrying guns because I simply don't know.
Now the reverse is also true, most people don't know what it is like living in British cities, towns and villages, we are five different countries with a couple of Crown Dependencies, each with differing laws, we have a culture of not carrying weapons with the subject rarely comes up in political discussions, the crime figures for each country vary because of the way figures are reported. Here those killed in terrorist attacks such as the Manchester Arena are counted in the homicide figures, as are people murdered overseas including military killed in attacks by insurgents.
The fact we don't carry weapons doesn't mean we are helpless or unaware of the dangers the world carries, it means we know our countries better than outsiders, it means we know what the dangers to us are and we cope with them. There is a tendency to assume non weapon carrying means being naïve and we get looked down on, our weapons laws are mocked and many assume an air of superiority but really they should actually just stick to what they know and leave us to worry about here.
