Well, to be honest it hasn’t always been a dystopian shithole. We were once a pretty good, law-abiding country.
Then the counterculture revolution happened. Drugs and their concomitant criminality skyrocketed. Violent criminals began to hit the streets over and over and over again, because, you see, it was society’s fault they turned out the way they did. And decades of permissiveness combined with ever shrinking educational standards created entire generations of entitled ne’er-do-wells who can’t hack it in life but feel entitled to take from others what they either can’t or can’t be arsed to earn for themselves.
And so here we are. Most of our states have passed laws allowing their citizens to carry firearms, our police forces have become para-military units, and the same people who’ve created all this are now whinging about our increasing ability to defend ourselves by focusing on the tiny minority of times that people get wrongfully shot by wackos with guns. If only the wackos were Muslims, these same people would be pointing out that more people get killed by lightning than by school shooters. So go figure, there’s just no explanation for how liberals think.
Anyone find it interesting that when there is a tragedy like this, many people on the left use it to try and effect meaningful change in gun control laws, while many people on the right use it to try and score idiotic political points against the evil left?
Not in my lifetime. I was born in 1970. In New York.
We also had a counterculture and rising recreational drug use in Europe generally, and Ireland specifically. Yours is not the only society to have been buffeted by these changes. We also have far more permissive criminal sentencing as well as a far more generous welfare state than that found stateside. As mentioned above by bucketybuck, we’ve even had to deal with a paramilitary insurgency for many decades since the halcyon 1950’s, and yet - ours is a far more peaceful and stable society than yours. You’re not looking for the sources of your manifold societal problems in the right place if your focus is on drugs, “liberals”, and terrorism…
Actually, homicide rates that did go up in the latter part of the 20th century have now fallen back to the level they were at around 1950. Over the long term (i.e., since the 1700s), the homocide rate has fallen dramatically.
And, in contrast to your claim that we have somehow let criminals out of prison, in fact incarceration rates soared in the last 50 years and are only starting to level off in about the last decade.
Your conservative fairy tale bears very little resemblance to reality, but hey, I am sure it makes you feel good.
Generally, fewer than in the US where “the means to defend themselves” are easily available for any idiot. But if you had been able to use Google and/or Wikipedia, you could have checked that yourself instead of JAQing off here.
UNODC murder rates (per 100,000 inhabitants)
94 United States 4.88
162 France 1.58
174 Sweden 1.15
178 Denmark 0.99
179 Australia 0.98
180 Portugal 0.97
183 United Kingdom 0.92
184 Iceland 0.91
185 New Zealand 0.91
190 Germany 0.85
192 Italy 0.78
197 Luxembourg 0.72
199 Switzerland 0.69
202 Ireland 0.64
204 Norway 0.56
208 Austria 0.51
212 Japan 0.31
Cite: List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia
Rape at the national level, number of police-recorded offenses
Rate per 100,000 population, 2010
Sweden 63.5
Australia 28.6
Belgium 27.9
United States 27.3
New Zealand 25.8
Norway 19.2
Finland 15.2
Ireland 10.7
Austria 10.4
Germany 9.2
Netherlands 9.2
Switzerland 7.1
Portugal 4.0
Spain 3.4
Canada 1.7
Japan 1.0
Cite: Rape statistics - Wikipedia
EDIT:
Guns per 100 residents
1 United States 101
8 Norway 31.3
9 France 30.8
11 Austria 30.4
12 Iceland 30.3
13 Germany 30.3
14 Finland 27.3
18 Switzerland 24.45
21 Australia 24.1
23 New Zealand 22.6
28 Sweden 21
36 Belgium 17.2
39 Luxembourg 15.3
54 Denmark 12
55 Italy 11.9
84 United Kingdom 6.2
As the one who proffered the formulation “dystopian shithole”, I take issue with this. Sure, “shithole” is in the eye of the beholder, but I’m on prettyfirmground when I assert the dystopian nature of current American society.
