What a Difference it Makes to be 2,344 km from Miami

On my way to one of my schools, walking through a particular quartier chaud (here, "hot neighborhood" absolutely does NOT mean trendy real estate), I always pass a mysterious monument on the plaza in front of the church.

The back, more interesting side of
the bland monument, which reads,
"Martinique remembers its
children, victims of violence,
November 22nd, 2014"

The front side of the bland
monument, referencing those who
died under the occupation during
WWII

While one side of the particularly boring monument references those who died under the occupation during WWII, the back side referenced victims of violence and the 22nd of November, 2014, a date that didn't ring any bells for me. So, since I've been feeling down lately, I assigned myself a research project to figure out what it was about.
The results were disappointing to say the least. Basically, I have failed my Histoire urbaine de Paris professor; I can't read monuments! The 22nd of November was just the date that they put up the plaque; nothing of particular postcolonial importance happened on that date.
However, my otherwise useless digging did turn up something else of interest. The cable news headline from the 22nd of November, 2014, did reference a different sort of violence. "Fifteen Dead and a Terrible Tension!", reads the title of the segment. Apparently, the night before, the 15th victim of homicide in Martinique in 2014 died. That's right, on this island of nearly 400,000 at the time, only 15 people had apparently been murdered by the end of the year, and people were scandalized! The FBI  estimates that, in that same year, there were 4.5 murders per 100,000 people in the U.S., or about 18 per Martinique-sized sample, and notes that was down from the year before!
I'm thrilled for Martinique that it's still shocking here to hear of guns coming out and people being murdered. What does it say about the U.S. that I find their attitude about it so naïve? (By the way, as of three days ago, the U.S. has had eleven schools shootings alone this year. But, yeah, we're the country of freedom or whatever.)