Gun ownership in the rural areas is half of it. Go anywhere outside your house, and what, you can't have a gun? And Brexit isn't a good example of a protest. We have serious race issues here due to our history, but bills tend to go through peacefully. Anyway, in the city, I don't support legal carrying. I'm on the fence about it.
Also, you most definitely do not have freedom of speech. As horrible as it is to be racist, you apparently have the thought police protecting people against it, which is even worse. Anti-semitism is the example I've seen in the news, and that's the only reason I'm mentioning it. Yeah, Nazis are bad, but a lot of these people are just enraged Palestinians, and they get
fined for being rude even if they aren't threatening. I'd think a speech-related crime would involve only jail time, not fines. A few examples:
https://cst.org.uk/antisemitism/prosecutions
In the US, you wouldn't be prosecuted for most of these things. They're very careful to respect free speech. If you made an actual threat to someone's safety, you could be arrested and/or jailed, maybe sued in a civil court for harassment, and that's it.
Well, the UK is at least far better than France in that area.