Anecdatally, I heard from someone that went back there to visit family for the holidays. They traveled to a ranch town on the countryside. They were stopped at roadblocks where armed men interrogated every man in their group before letting them through
When I drove through Mexico the police escorted me for a good 90 minutes as I crossed Michoacan, and after that I wasn't allowed to stop (not that I was going to) and had to keep going until Guerrero.
Does anyone else think that the really strange approach to legalization in the US is because the cartels realize that full legalization would result in a radical reduction of profit for them, and that our local governments are probably being bribed or blackmailed into coercing the wrong policies time and time again. Just me?
I don't think including Felipe Calderon was a wise choice, his 'war on drugs' is seen as him just wanting to take out the other cartels and replacing them with his own.
Did the cartels take him out? I doubt it. Its an open secret in Mexico that these people have to be worried about the police and goverment more than cartels at least until Felipe Calderon changed things.
Our country just came out from a brutal war on drugs, nothing good came out of it but only low level street soldiers are being killed. Some masterminds came from the government or cops.
Harm reduction in the Vancouver/SF model is a failure.
Estonia (with fentanyl) and Switzerland (with heroin) only worked because over time the state became the only source of these drugs. They rooted out most dealers and sources of the drugs.
As long as it is available on the streets cheaply, people will defect and return to illicit purchasing. Estonia and Switzerland have basically eliminated new illicit opioid users from the population. In much of the US, suggesting this is a positive aim is tantamount to “hating” addicts.
I agree that opiates require a more comprehensive approach than just legalizing, but I wonder if the astronomical cost of housing in those cities contributes to making it hard to really get people off the streets and out of the system.
There is a serious opioid problem in the rural Midwest and Appalachia but most users there are housed because housing is affordable. Many also have roots like family in the area. Makes treatment way easier if people are safe and off the street already.
How do you get off the street when, at least in SF, the poverty line is upwards of $100k/year? You could leave but that’s a big leap for someone battling addiction with no resources and a very small world.
Don’t know.. it just seems like other places in the world have decriminalized to better effect and something else is wrong in West Coast cities. The cost of housing seems like one possibility.
Edit: could also be cultural. I know Vancouver has a deeply rooted opiate culture. Just go listen to some 90s industrial from that place. Every song is about smack or trying to kick smack or being back on smack. Good music though. There’s a whole thing about heroin and good music. Too bad it’s so addictive and toxic.
Most unhoused opioid users in SF are happy to remain homeless. Their base income is north of $12k tax free a year (SNAP and their SF homeless grant); one woman I’ve been trying to help for over two years makes north of $30k annually, tax free, with zero expenses other than fentanyl and food. Very few are willing to trade the amenable weather and lack of any behavioral restrictions for the (frankly quite minimal) requirements that come with temporary shelter, let alone those associated with a SRO or permanent long term housing.
Sounds like I am missing the most obvious thing: they literally pay people to be homeless.
It sounds like once you are in that lifestyle the incentive is very much to stay there. So no wonder.
Of course the high cost of real housing doesn’t help. Makes it that much harder to get truly out of poverty. It also makes a life off the street look unattainable. It’s telling a mentally ill addict there is no hope for them to truly get off the street unless they can somehow produce an engineering degree or gain equivalent experience.
Yes - and I think worse than that, they don’t pay people to get better. So they create a very real financial cliff for anyone who is determined to make a lifestyle change.
What is the probability of being able to get better once addicted to strong opioids, regardless of incentive? Is it possible the brain’s chemistry gets irreversibly broken at some point?
I have used opioids since the mid-2000s. I am on a low enough dose today that it treats my cancer/Crohns pain but I feel no noticeable psychological effects. I can and do easily taper off multiple times a year for tolerance resets.
Further, every year a number of people in my programme finally taper off methadone for good; the relapse rate is in the low single digits. This is similarly the case for patients in Switzerland’s heroin assisted treatment programme. (I live in Estonia and am on their methadone equivalent.)
For the first and third, yes. I can walk into a pharmacy as a non-resident and within 24 hours be approved for emergency safe supply hydromorphone (dilaudid).
You also have the DULF distributing medicinal grade heroin with the tacit support of local government.
Your examples are of a national nature (and much smaller/heterogeneous populations). When you have hot spots like Portland and SF they become drug tourist locations.
Let the people have their drugs. Try to minimize consumption and abuse (and profit motive), and treat such abuse as a health issue, not a criminal one. That is the only sensible and humane way. Easier said than done, of course.
At the risk of redundancy, I want to include that proper discussion of the subject requires an understanding of the origins and intentions of these laws. The current system fails in every way except in satisfying those original intentions (hint: not benign).
And here come the bullshitter prohibitionists, to argue for the same essential policy that has been a CONSISTENT failure for going on 60 years now in a war without end that has been the root cause of this entire cartel industry, trillions in spending and untold numbers of murders.
Yes, the cartels diversify, yes, they can make money from other things, but no, the profits of these other revenue sources will simply not match the backbone of support and systematic, prolonged institutional corrupting power that the illegal drug market provides in the long run.
Half-baked and half applied legalization7decriminalization models are not the answer, and when they very sparsely get applied, full of regulatory hurdles (never mind the outright global prohibition that still exists for the sale of most hard drugs and even marijuana) you simply can't make a fair argument for how any existing policy has failed at legalization and that thus the only answer is some variation of continuing the immensely destructive prohibitionist model that has spent decades bringing things to their present state.
How stupid, intellectually dishonest or bloody-minded does one have to be to continue advocating for anything except complete legalization and regulation in a practical, broadly-applied, responsible way?
What is intellectually dishonest is mischaracterizing my beliefs, which you have done to an impressive degree.
I’m an opioid addict and formerly homeless person who has spent thousands of hours advocating for, and working with, the unhoused. I am the furthest thing from a 1980s drug warrior.
In fact, I have always argued that American drug policies are an unequivocal failure. All I have stated, and continue to believe, is that one cannot emulate successes such as those in Estonia, Switzerland, Portugal and other jurisdictions by picking only the policies that are most politically feasible or attractive. These are holistic approaches that require changing the incentives of all agents interacting in the illicit drug economy.
If one only focuses on a single element of the trade (say, the users, as has been done in many American metropoles) then the policy is bound to fail.
If this is the case than I do seriously apologize. I assumed you were arguing for prohibition and a return to tendencies in this direction that are only just now, finally being reevaluated in favor of at least debating legalization. To me that essential prohibitionist stance is disgusting, and especially so after so many years of abject failure.
I agree, a holistic approach is a good idea, but at least in my assessment, it absolutely needs to include a serious move towards practical legalization while investing in support for addiction problems among users. The latter is important, but the formar is the very major missing piece. Multinational drug trafficking organizations will diversify, but without that huge central source of revenue, they'll be walking on a much weaker path in their attempts to dominate entire regions and national governments.
We seem to be in agreement here. I apologise that these discussions have to become so heated; I understand this only comes from a place of compassion and frustration on your part. I appreciate your enthusiasm for change and obvious love for people who are - and have been in - my former position; there’s absolutely no anger on my side for the accidental friendly fire.
Thank you so much for speaking up. The necessary changes in this space are only going to happen with continued pressure to abdicate the status quo.
It's an emotionally charged topic, but one of the reasons it's bad to call others names is that they can turn around and do the same thing to do. "You're too dumb and stupid to see the right answer". It adds nothing and worsens the convo.
The cartels would still exist; they'd continue to make money, selling untaxed drugs, & via kidnappings and extorsions, & the numerous other ways that can be found to make money if you are willing to break the law and do bad things.
The solution to cartels is a strong and effective state. Think Singapore, or what Bukele is doing in El Salvador now, or NYC vs the mob.
Well the genie has been let out of the bottle so undoing that damage will be a long slog.
But that doesn't change the fact that the the laws are flawed and don't make things better.
If you do the research, you'll find that drug prohibition has been based on the oppression of minorities and "undesirables", and that only in that regard has it been an overwhelming success.
> The best way to have less people use drugs is probably to make it illegal to use and buy drugs.
I think we have proven this to be incorrect.
In fact, making it illegal to use and buy drugs has the effect of locking people into a counter-culture and making it a major life decision to use drugs instead of a daily decision like it should be.
If I want to take time off of work to waste a day of my life doing drugs for fun and pick up where I left off the next day, that shouldn't be a life destroying decision.
> making it a major life decision to use drugs instead of a daily decision
You basically spell it out yourself. Making it legal and accepted to use drugs makes more people use it. If more people use it there will be more drugs being sold.
People think that by making it legal the drug dealers will go away (and all other drug related problems) and serious companies will take over. But this is very unlikely so as the illegal sellers will always be able to undercut the legal sellers on price as well as service (24/7 etc). Same with legal producers vs illegal producers etc.
In addition, making it legal and thus having more people use drugs increases those side effects as well (such as you say "waste a day of my life doing drugs" or maybe waste your whole life or your spouses life or your kids life).
> You basically spell it out yourself. Making it legal and accepted to use drugs makes more people use.
I don't think I said that at all. Just because it is made to be a major life decision does not mean that the decision is made with proper due diligence or even with a rational mind.
In fact, these decisions are usually made by very young people. This has the unfortunate side effect of locking a lot of people into a way of life because they decided to try drugs as a teen.
It is possible to try some drugs and walk away like smoking a little weed as a college kid, but a lot of times drugs are used as an escape. At a young age that escape can be tempting and you can develop a habit. Now, if drug use were legalized and normalized, you could seek help and not otherwise impact your life, but as it stands it is more likely that a habit would result in a conviction which will follow them around for life making it harder to find a well paying job, decent housing etc. The cycle reinforces itself over the course of a lifetime.
Now as far as numbers go, the current policies ensure that a drugs retention rate is as high as possible. If policies forced more churn, then the number of simultanious users at any one time could be lower. They could be higher, but we havent had the oportunity to see.
We've already determined that it's okay to sell highly addictive and lethal drugs (tobacco and alcohol). Now it's a matter of being consistent about it.
The best way to to have people use less drugs is to have them live happy lives that they don't feel compelled to escape.
Violence has gone way up ever since the US legalized marijuana. Not saying it’s the cause but, having lived in Mexico from 2011 to 2022, it annoys me that people believe that by legalizing drugs the cartels will start earning money legally.
Now I live in the UAE. Drugs are very illegal and violent crime is practically non-existent.
Right, I used to think legalisation was the answer for Mexico's violence. But in reality things keep getting out of control here. People get violent because they can. There's no accountability.
We need am army from outside to come and squash all the major violent criminals (cartels with grenade launchers and ak47s). We need a ruthless justice system like the Arab ones that cuts people hands and puts criminal dogs to sleep.
People that live outside of Mexico dont get it.. in here, the police is part of the criminals, judges are bought by crime, the politicians and rich people give money and space to the criminals. It's a real cesspool.
And I say this as some who was born here in Mexico, all my family is here, and have lived here for a long time.
> Why not? Why wouldn't moving to a harm reduction model for all drugs be a win for everyone except the prison industrial complex?
Legalizing all recreational drugs isn't "harm reduction", it's creating a bigger drug addiction pandemic. Successful Harm reduction models like in Portugal have legalized no recreational drugs.
> Decriminalisation and seeing drug use as a medical problem rather than stigmatising it seems to work.
But Portugal hasn't legalized, taxed anything. (illegal) Recreational drugs are still illegal. There is no need to legalize any drug to do harm reduction. Not even Cannabis is legal in Portugal.
And why? Those who want drugs, can get (any) drugs today, just with bad quality and the dark sides of crime involved. Who do stuff like adding other drugs that have a higher addiction potential.
If you legalize it, all the dark sides of cartels and co vanishes and you can spend all the police money on education and therapy to fight the actual bad sides of drugs. And preventing the reasons for people to do (hard) drugs in the first place.
Those who want drugs can’t really get any drugs today. If I wanted to get meth I would have to talk to quite a few people at my local bar before I found someone to sell it. That’s a significant enough deterrent to me trying it that first time.
If you want a true analog take a look at Afghanistan where something like 20-30% of the population may be users. Or Native American reservations where banning alcohol has drastic reductions in crime and domestic abuse rates. Or Singapore that essentially has no junkies.
I love in Portugal. They still need to legalize and regulate drugs because there are plenty of street dealers and junkies. Stop using Portugal as some amazing fix. It isn't
Harm reduction is a series of publicly funded social and rehabilitation/substitution programs that has absolutely nothing to do with legalizing any sort of drugs. Legalization is an entire different question, just don't try to make "harm reduction" yet another buzzword for legalization.
Currently junkies need the dealers to get their supplies. So they have to support crime, to meet their needs. And they get bad quality with usually extra poisenous additives. Legalizing would immmediately reduce or remove those 2 harms.
But I agree that we should not stop there, but rather help them stop being junkies at all, with various help programms. I just happen to think it is easier to reach people in legal ways, than criminalize them. But you seem to disagree here?
People can be functional heroin addicts (same as functional alcoholics).
Not that it’s a good or desirable thing.
Most heroin overdoses come from cut drugs, or from using at similar level after a break, often caused by prison stints. Both direct consequences of them being illegal.
I have read somewhere that heroin is the better methadone. There are people on pain killers for years. Why shouldn't people be able to live with heroin?
Drug users should stop doing narcotics because of the violence that results. It's not just about being a poor life choice. There are a lot of good folks across the world who live in dangerous communities because others have an appetite for artificial stimulation.
It is tempting to believe that drugs are the reason of violence here in Mexico. The reality is way more complex, and these cartels and violent groups with many income sources, corruption is what allow them to flourish. So yeah, drugs are part of the problem but not the main reason.
Societies should stop criminalizing drugs and drug users. It's not just about being a poor way to govern a society. There are a lot of good folks across the world who live in dangerous communities because others have a predilection for legislating morality and controlling others' bodies.
As an individual there is an ethical choice to abstain that is outside of criminalization and societal morality. It is similar choice to not eating meat because factory farms lead to poor treatment of other beings. It is similar to riding a bike instead of driving a car.
In both meat eating and driving those activities have inherent harm, eating meat will cause animals harm, driving a car will cause pollution and release of GHG.
The harm of the drugs trade (on a societal level) is _due to its illegality_ I.e. it is run by criminals.
Abstention from drug consumption is absolutely not an ethical imperative. In fact, if anything, given what we know about the immense quality of life improvements from various psychoactive substances for a broad range of humans, both of nominal neurological makeup and those of neurodivergence, it may be a moral imperative to modulate our cognitive function.
Regardless, it is absolutely not immoral or unethical to consume drugs. What is immoral, is imposing the negative consequences of prohibition upon society because of your particular moral code. You want to lock people in a cage at the end of a gun because you disagree with the choices they make for their own bodies. It is authoritarian shite of the highest degree.
Decriminalizing is not enough. Legal, cheap, and with huge amounts of education and medical assistance at dispensation outlets is the only path towards dealing with the problem, IMO.
From my perspective, most of the bad effects of those drugs occur due to their illegality. Meth, heroin, cocaine, etc. is pretty fucking dirt cheap to produce. The impurities and high costs and unknown doses and burdens to the carceral system are what impose the bulk of the costs to society.
Not every drug user is a “junkie”. Anecdotally I know of two past regular cocaine users who stopped precisely because they couldn’t stomach the supply chain ethics.
You're not wrong, but no pile of shoulds is going to be effective in this endeavor.
Instead, I'd like to work on genetically engineering yeasts and bacteria to synthesize the desired alkaloids in a homebrew setting. It would be more ethical, and probably safer too.
It’s certainly not the users’ faults for starters, and “artificial stimulation” should include alcohol and cigarettes which don’t result in situations of the magnitude we see regarding the illegal drug trade, perhaps exactly because they are legal and regulated.
Do you have a nice house? a nice car? how did you pay for it? Confiscated.
Do you carry a lot of money? Confiscated (civil forfeiture).
Did you make a large money transfer over 10,000? Reported to the IRS.
Is there something off in your tax return? is there a large fluctuation in money? is there a lot of money from unusual sources? Audited by the IRS.
And the list goes on and on.
That is the kind of stuff Mexico needs.
Do you dress really nicely and have a cool car and house but no university degree, no occupation and cannot explain where your stuff comes from? We confiscate all of your shit just in case.
Do you have a degree but talk like you did not go to elementary school? Standardized test follow by the confiscation of all your shit.
Exactly my point. As proven time and time again through the 20th century by the like of Lenin, Castro, Mao, Sankara, Cabeçadas, Papadópoulos, Castelo Branco and others, an armed takeover restablishing order and gaining territorial control is the quickest path to freedom and democracy. /s
You need a functional government to do everything you listed, not that any of it would work.
This isn't the movies- the bad guys don't all wear fancy suits. They don't carry millions in cash. And good luck getting anywhere near their property to confiscate anything, you'd have to get past their personal army first.
When the cops work for the cartels, and so does the federal government- it becomes almost impossible to restore order.
It's early for me, so if the post was sarcasm that flew over my head I apologize on advance.
The premise of being a bad guy is that if you climb the ladder in the organized crime career path, you will be successful.
What a government must do, is to completely obliterate the reputation of anyone that could serve as an example of a successful organized crime guy. And instead, leave that person so humiliated so that no one wants to be that person.
Something such as "Hey little kid, is this loser your hero? Look what we are going to do to this clown", and then do a full Jackass style movie making fun of the guy, and make everyone believe that guy is the ultimate loser.
Also, send the message: if you steal $1, we will have no problem spending $1 million dollars chasing you down. There will be no tolerance for you.
Combine two things and what you have is: the defeat of learned helplessless, which is the true epidemic of Mexico. The feeling no one can do anything about it. In truth, you can. You can go where the bully is remind them that bullying you is not for free.
Arm every Mexican citizen with an AR-15 on their 15th birthday and then organized crime will be gone in 24 hours. Tell every citizen that if they seize money from organized crime they can keep it, and organized crime will disappear overnight. If you do that, the power will shift from incompetent politicians and organized crime, to the majority of people, who are decent, hardworking individuals that want peace. If you want peace, prepare for war.
If your neighbor is Clint Eastwood from Gran Torino you will not mess with that neighboor, and you will probably start using the words "please", "thank you" and "sir" more.
> Mexico has extremely restrictive laws regarding gun possession. There are only two stores in the entire country, DCAM near the capital, and OTCA, in Apodaca, Nuevo León. It also takes months of paperwork to have a chance at purchasing one legally.
> In 1971, Article 10 of the present Constitution was changed[10] to limit the right to keep arms within the home only (in Spanish: ...derecho a poseer armas en su domicilio...) and reserved the right to bear arms outside the home only to those explicitly authorized by law (i.e. police, military, armed security officers). The following year, the Federal Law of Firearms and Explosives came into force[11] and gave the federal government complete jurisdiction and control to the legal proliferation of firearms in the country; at the same time, heavily limiting and restricting the legal access to firearms by civilians.
> As a result of the changes to Article 10 of the Mexican Constitution and the enactment of the Federal Law of Firearms and Explosives, openly carrying a firearm or carrying a concealed weapon in public is virtually forbidden to private citizens, unless explicitly authorized by the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA). For purposes of personal protection, firearms are only permitted within the place of residence and of the type and caliber permitted by law.
One reason is having a giant porous (at least in the north -> south direction) border with the US.
They are also a major exporter of illegal drugs to the US (aka the world’s biggest market for illegal drugs), being both a producer and trade route for other producer nations further south.
Control of these trade routes is extremely profitable, and guns are super easy to import. It’s not that surprising that the situation is different to Japan or Sweden.
I live in Mexico and have for nearly two decades. I can tell you that blaming the United states on the violence in this country is a half-baked argument at best. Firearms availability to the cartels is only a part of a much wider, deeper problem of systemic corruption at all levels of government, causing widespread uselessness in the basic infrastructure of government doing its most fundamental job of providing public safety.
In Mexico, the state and its functionaries (very much including the police) at all levels are too inept, too corrupt and too indifferent to handle their investigative and protective duties as things stand. This is a major cause of insecurity and high crime. It's only a secondary factor that the cartels and their weapons (many of which are not even bought from the U.S but instead stolen or bought from the corrupt public security agencies, unless you think you can buy RPGs and mortars in an American gun store, for example). That these cartels dominate so much isn't specifically because they can buy U.S weapons, or use money from drug sales to the U.S. to corrupt institutions. Instead they dominate because they can do all these things in a landscape where the state either retreats persistently, doesn't seriously apply itself to public security or simply sells itself to their bidding.
Canada, to the north of the U.S also has plenty of drug demand, drug sales from the U.S and an even more open border, yet it remains a safe, well-run country. Why? Because unlike the government in Mexico, Canada's government takes its duties seriously and invests in applying them.
Yeah totally, I said one said “one reason”. :) I lived in Brazil for a while, and definitely saw that gangs can get plenty big and plenty violent with plenty of guns even just catering to the domestic drug market and without easy gun imports.
But I also remember reading about the US$100,000,000 bribe allegedly paid to Pena Nieto in 2012. Like, damn, it’s gotta be hard to fight corruption in a middle-income country when the criminals have that kind of cash to throw around.
Yep, exactly right. It's like Chicago's gun control efforts when Gary is only a short drive away. Something like 70% of cartel guns recovered came from US manufacturers (Mexican government claims 90%) - but either way, they smuggle drugs north and cash / guns South.
> Article 3 of Colombia's firearm law states that civilians may possess firearms only via permit issued at discretion of the competent authority.[45]
> In 1993, Colombia legislated gun ownership, effectively establishing a government licensing monopoly. In 2016, president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos signed an executive order suspending civilians from carrying firearms, with some exceptions including security details, hunting, private defense and collection. It was extended in 2018 by newly elected president Ivan Duque, albeit with the added stipulation: "for reasons of emergency or security ... taking into consideration among other factors, the particular circumstances of each application".
> Gun laws in Honduras are stated in the Act on the Control of Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Material of 2000.[199] In April 2002, the National Arms Registry was formed, requiring all citizens to register their firearms with the Ministry of Defense.[200]
> In 2003, a ban on certain "assault rifles" was passed, restricting citizens from possessing military-style rifles such as the AK-47 and the M-16.[201] In 2007, an additional decree suspended the right to openly carry and conceal carry a firearm in public, and limited the number of firearms a person can possess.[202]
Gun laws, when enforced, are effective at stopping random psychos from getting assault rifles to shoot up schools etc. But organized crime gangs that are already breaking the law to smuggle contraband have the means, the motive and the opportunity to acquire guns illegally.
That depends very much on the country. In places like Japan or Singapore, it would be next to impossible for an average Joe to acquire an illegal firearm, unless they're willing to smuggle it in from overseas themselves.
I guess. To be honest this is mostly a cultural trait of compliance. The laws didn't stop Shinzo Abe's killer from making a homemade gun from pipes. Guns aren't really that fancy. It's 13th century technology and fairly trivial to construct.
I'm in no way implying that open-carry discourages civil war or whatever, I'm just saying that there are HUGE swathes of the world where the gun laws on the books are not respected whatsoever.
I guess by "most of the world" you are mostly referring to the African and South-East Asian countries that are red on the map you linked, but have long-running civil wars and other armed conflicts? Well, the explanation is the same as in the case of Mexico: corruption and a dysfunctional government. But yes, the tendency to make restrictions and punishments harsher hoping that they will be respected at least a little bit even though they are not enforced is pretty universal. Some examples: the potential death penalty for possessing larger quantities of drugs in Thailand. Or the ever-increasing penalties for traffic violations here in Germany, which correlate with less and less enforcement because of understaffed police...
Sweden's gun and other violence has been increasingly markedly, with them now having one of the highest gun homicide rates in Europe [1]:
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"A 2018 systematic review of 25 studies on firearm violence in Sweden by criminologist and physician Ardavan Khoshnood, concluded "that even though knives/sharp weapons continue to be the most common MO in a violent crime in Sweden, firearm-related violence is significantly increasing in the country and foremost when discussing gang-related crimes. Moreover, firearm-related homicides and attempted homicides are increasing in the country."
"In 2021, Sweden was found to have the 2nd highest gun homicide rate (after Croatia) out of 22 European countries surveyed. Most other countries surveyed had instead experienced a decline in gun homicides."
"By 2021, gun violence by crime gangs had increased tenfold since the early 1990s."
Virtually all of central and south America have stricter gun laws than the U.S. and virtually all of those countries have higher gun violence rates. It's not just Mexico, it's Honduras, Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, etc etc
Doesn’t surprise me as Gottsunda is a properly miserable area.
The amazing thing about Sweden is that very few people want to acknowledge that it has problems just like any other country. There is crime, racism, poverty, housing crisis, alcoholism, etc.
Seems stupid to me since it’s hard to improve the situation if you can’t acknowledge the problems.
I lived in Göteborg for six years, and Stockholm for a year. Also lived in Halmstad for a shorter period. I’m fluent in Swedish, and I’ve traveled the country a fair bit — including to Gottsunda. A [severely disabled] friend of mine lives there, so I’ve visited a few times. It’s a total ghetto.
I’m assuming your question is friendly curiosity, and not an attempt to disqualify my opinion.
Your opinion was disqualified when you categorized an entire country as stupid. We have a lot of problems and one of them is an abundance of people with inflammatory opinions that are keen to authoritatively describe what "the real problem is". But I guess you lived here too long to get infected by the stupidness. Sorry!
Sweden had a total of 360 shootings and 62 firearm homicides last year. In a country with 10 million people. That's roughly the size of North Carolina where they have an average of 1,300 shootings and ~530 firearm homicides. Their gun control seems to be pretty effective!
The US is the 32nd worst country in the world for gun violence, with 4.12 incidents per 100k population per year. That's a terrible comparison.
You should compare it to other countries instead. To me, an Irish person (ranked 157 at 0.18 per 100k) living in Vietnam (ranked 173 at 0.12 incidents per 100k), the gun violence in Sweden sounds shockingly high.
Although it's actually only a bit higher than Ireland at position 149, 0.25 per 100k.
Look at the rates of homicides by firearm for White Americans and they’re within the same order of magnitude as European nations.
This is a conversation that is verboten in the US because people assume that it means you believe that crime must be intrinsic to race, even though this statistic is actually fully compatible with the liberal orthodoxy regarding the disparate impact of government policy on American Black people.
There is always a gap between rich and poor on violent crime like homicides but the cross racial gap persists (in the US) at any point along the continuum of SES.
Anecdatally, I heard from someone that went back there to visit family for the holidays. They traveled to a ranch town on the countryside. They were stopped at roadblocks where armed men interrogated every man in their group before letting them through