This is far from the whole answer, but I really think the American attitude towards self-defense, honor, & justice plays a part. The 2A codifies this ethos practically, & makes it explicit & actionable. I think we have a low tolerance for injustice & barbarism (when we know itās happening).
This was on display (& slightly humorously) when, during the Paris Olympics, Parisians seemed to be shocked by Americansā short tempers & violent resistance to pickpocketers. The police had to put out notices to āplease contact them & wait for assistanceā or some such plea. The American audienceās response to learning this was to scoff. Obviously, this is a much more mild situation & one that didnāt involve what has essentially worked out to be a conspiracy between criminals & the agencies that are tasked with protecting citizens from them, as it appears the grooming gang scandal is. But, I do think it is a representation of the American ethos towards crime, & how we react to others perpetrating it on us. We feel justified in reacting, including through violence. āFrontier justiceā was a thing.
Our moral scaffolding is Christian. This shapes our ideas of justice, righteousness, equality, virtue, tolerance, dignity, & decorum. This Christian scaffolding is more intact & robust in the US, than in the UK. The Christian moral foundation that the USā constitutional order was built upon informed so much of our culture, despite the US never being founded as a formal Christian state. Americans donāt have to be Christian to adhere to & believe in the foundational truths this moral foundation girds. Itās the same foundation that informed the Western Tradition at large (human rights, free speech, private property, etc.) but America made it explicit & nonnegotiable with its founding.
I believe this American outlook would prevent an American grooming gang scandal, but that would require large amounts of Americans being aware of such scandal happening.
two questions falling out of this for americans
1. why did this not seem to happen in the US; and relatedly,
2. what steps can we take to ensure that this never happens in the US