If anything, the UK take on surveillance was (for me as a visiting American) hugely de-stressing.

In the US, I worry that some anonymous fellow citizen packing heat is going to snap and decide to execute a lifestyle change on me I didn't ask for and then melt away, unaccountable. The US unsolved murder rate is at a record high. Between the lack of firearm rights and the ubiquitous surveillance, I never had that fear in the UK.

In the UK it'll just be a knife instead of a gun.

The US has even higher rates/incidence of knife violence than the UK. Knife crime just gets more air time in the UK presumably because gun crime isn't drowning it out.

That's much preferable. The odds of a person catching a stray knife from a conflict a block away, or being one of a dozen knifing victims in a mass knifing incident because someone had a bad day and decided to take it out on a shopping mall, are far lower than with the other weapon. I haven't heard, but I'm pretty sure elementary school students in Bristol aren't holding knifing drills where they learn how to hide under their desks and pretend they've already been knifed.

They say a fish isn't really aware of the water they're swimming in. Visiting Europe was like having a weight lifted off me, a tension released, that I'd been carrying my whole life and didn't know was there. Americans just live with the spectre of death due to random gun violence perched on their shoulder these days.