2 ms·

Yes. For so many problems, I hear "see, it's impossible because of this or that", while ignoring that it's being done elsewhere just fine.

• rayiner 8y ago
  America is very different from other countries. For example, at the dawn of the 20th century, the US had a murder rate 10x higher than the UK. That was before prohibition, before the drug war, before significant gun control in either country. The best we ever did was in the 1950s, when the UK was shattered by WWII, and the US was enjoying an unprecedented economic boom. Even then our murder rate was 5x higher than the UK’s. (And note, that was after prohibition ended and before the drug war began.) That statistic says something really fundamental about Americans and the nature of American society. People assume you can just look over the pond at policies used in Western Europe and get the same results here. But over and over it’s proven that’s not true. For example, we spend way more on education per student than the UK, but get much worse results. Conversely, some of the states in the US that have the most guns and loosest gun laws, like Idaho, are also the only ones to even come close to having murder rates as low as Western Europe.