> America needs to reflect on why it's unique

When it’s unique, yes. In the case, metal theft is documented in Australia, Australia, Canada, France, Czechia, the Netherlands and the UK [1].

(To be fair, I’m not seeing any sources credibly auditing prevalence versus occurrence.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_theft#Notable_metal_thef...

I didn't do a quantative analysis (I bet neither did you), but copper theft happens everywhere:

- https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/heilbronn/t...

- https://www.ladepeche.fr/2025/11/14/info-la-depeche-explosiv...

- https://nos.nl/artikel/2591857-na-koperdiefstal-in-veenhuize...

Not just America. People are stealing copper in very rural areas in my country; in many cases the price they get is hardly paying for the petrol to drive there. We have a whole team now in my company dedicated to repairing damage from copper theft, it's rampant.