Violent America, peaceful Europe?

Journalist Julia Ioffe tweets:

The events of the last few months are just reminder that America was always Europe's bizarre, messy, violent, and uncivilized cousin.

- Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) January 12, 2017

After the last century-and-change of Europe's reasonable, tidy, peace-loving and civilized history, surely everyone would have to agree!

To be fair to Ioffe, she added this, "to clarify":

Allow me to clarify: Until WWII, many European travel accounts portrayed the US that way. Many Europeans still often see us that way.

- Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) January 12, 2017

Not exactly sure how this clarifies things, though. I considered, incidentally, the possibility that Ioffe is speaking of criminal violence rather than political violence - there, the United States does generally have more violence than most Western European countries - but that's hard to fit with "the events of the last few months," or with Ioffe's other recent tweets. Or am I missing something?

Thanks to Stephen Green at Instapundit for the pointer.