Yes, quite unnecessary to say the least. Seems there aren't any fatalities though (one, but the news is saying that individual died of other causes). Probably meant as some kind of retaliation, which is ironic, but too bad he retaliated on the wrong people.

Insensitive, yes, although I was referring to the hypocricy of your statement as it was based on your own premise of London turning into a Counterstrike map, when similar stuff goes on in your own country, and indeed everywhere in the world. The link, which shows a recent attack  in Virginia with similar apparent motives to the one in London last night, I provided merely as an illustration.

It was an exaggeration. Am I however concerned for London? Yes, yes I am.

We forget that London is one city; the United States is a massive country. Seeing these sorts of issues occur more often in the past few weeks is concerning to me.

What fear and prejudice can drive someone to do is insane. It's a bad reminder that terrorism can come in all shapes and sizes. Hell, the IRA wasn't that long ago. Hopefully London can grow and come together as a city during these dreadful times.

In this massive country people are so desensitised to mass shootings most aren't even on the news anymore? It's a stupid exaggeration. You live in a glass house, I'd stop throwing stones.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting

Sadly, it was only a matter of time until the hate mongering resulted in something like this. We went from one tragedy to the next recently, and while our mind was elsewhere of late due to the latest not being hatred based and seeing how a community of people have come together to help each other, nut jobs won't let us forget for long.

Indeed, but it should be kept in context. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/many-people-killed-terrorist-attacks-uk/

Not belittling any of the terrorist incidents, including the one in Manchester, but it should also be kept in mind that many more people were killed in the tragic fire in London last week - the numbers are still rising as they are still trying to account for people.

And I doubt that the story of the forest fire in Portugal has made as big a splash your side of the pond, despite there being just as many people being killed as those in the London tower block. Different circumstances, but equally tragic.

Looking at the bigger picture informs.

I never said the USA is perfect. I however didn't mention our ridiculous gun issue due to the fact that it holds no relevance in this topic. The last sentence was uncalled for. Had we been discussing gun violence, then I would've mentioned the flaws in my country

People are desensitised. What am I supposed to do about it? It's not my fault that hundreds of millions of guns are possessed by Americans. Not my fault that many of us think they'll magically protect us.

Haven't seen much coverage of the Portugal fire. Last time I checked, it was at 50 victims. Now it's at 62. The building which was sent into flames is still changing by the day. Even if we assumed only 70 people died from the fire, that's 132 people who died from two events, one of which had little to no coverage for some odd reason.

The Manchester attack had approximately 20 people dead and 140 injured. However, factoring in environmental damage does show that these attacks are not as dangerous as things such as fires.

I get that the natural disaster(s) were more devastating. I actually do point that out often. However, will we see a series of attacks as time goes on, or is London simply unlucky currently?

I should say that London is still much luckier and safer than some US cities where gun crime is a part of daily life. My point is that everyone who has commented in this thread along the lines of 'shit, London's a dangerous place to be' has done so without putting it into context and looking at the bigger picture.

There have been some terrible atrocities over the years, all over the world, that will take time to come to terms with. Some will never be able to come to terms with them. And believe me, there's a whole spectrum of emotion going on here right now.

What happens in the future, who can say. But people still live and work in London, all 8.6 million of them. They're not going to go running off because 'it's dangerous', which makes some of the comments in this thread look even more pathetic.

We don't always make the smartest comments when we feel dumbfounded. My bland counterstrike joke wasn't exactly gut-busting comedy either.

At the end of the day, these sort of events are bad, but it's bound to happen in such a large city. Avoiding terrorism/violence altogether is impossible. As you said, London is still rather safe in terms of homicide (especially compared to places such as Chicago)