I keep hearing from numerous Europeans that the US has more in common culturally w/ them than anywhere else so our crime problems must be due to guns. One thing they tend to ignore is that we are nowhere near as homogeneous as they are. Numerous countries (Germany, France, Switzerland, et al) are having political backlashes against those who refuse to assimilate whereas here, we have entire neighborhoods of cities that maintain their own indigenous societies and have for over a hundred years. Chinatowns being a prime example. This can also be related to the criminal sub-cultures. Most Western European criminals wouldn't think of killing someone over a prank or shooting up neighborhoods over a gang war, even in countries with relatively high firearm ownership levels. Russia, on the other hand, is demographically closer to the US with it's large variety of ethnic groups , has 1/10th the legal firearm ownership of the US according to the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies, and yet has five times the murder and suicide rate of the US. In the UK, even with firearms being effectively banned, school uniforms are being made "slash-proof" to protect against attacks.
So next time I hear that the US and Europe are nearly identical, I'm going to offer to drop them off in Cabrini Green or Englewood and see what they say if they come back.
1 comment:
As a European citizen, who has traveled across the US, I' have to agree with you on the bigger part.
The major fault in their reasoning is that there would be a thing as "European" culture. People in France, Belgium, Britain and Poland differ vastly from each other.
Same can be said for people in different states in the US.
Truth? Making any statement about similarities between entire continents just proves that you're disconnected from the real world.
Which doesn't mean to say that there's a lot of people in the US who are very similar to certain Europeans.
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