I would have to say that the Italians are more ruthless simply from hearing "the man in the barrel story". A Irish women found a barrel with a piece of cloth hanging out of it and went to see what the deal was and she found a man broken in half with his tesicles cut off and in his mouth.
"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." - Al Capone (1899-1947)
