An Alienated Rural Democrat's plea from 2004

[gejohnston]

7. end the drug war

take away their guns by taking away their money. Treating addiction as a health issue instead criminal issue. That would save lives in other ways too. Heroin kills more people than guns or cars.
Laws only affect the law abiding. While background checks are good in principle, but do you really think a fence is going to do a NICS check for the local undocumented pharmacy or gangster? No.

When you look at the most violent cities in the world, two or three being in the US, all have these in common
Drug gangs
Extreme poverty
Political corruption
Extremes in wealth inequality

Gun ownership rates in Norway, Canada, Iceland, and Switzerland isn't that much lower than ours. Some studies put Finland higher than us. They don't have gang battles do they? It isn't like Chicago or even the Merrylands, a suburb of Sydney that has a lot of drive bys. The bright side of Australian drive by shootings is that they often use homemade submachine guns, that hit nobody.

I have a huge list of parts of a solution which would piss off both parties, and most of it having to be done locally. It would also piss off the booze lobby, private prison lobby, drug testing lobby, and maybe even pot growers who don't like to pay taxes. The first is get rid of zoning laws that prevent walkable neighborhoods. That would also create local jobs, maybe even urban agriculture.

That is just as true in someplace in Brazil, which has stricter laws than the UK, as it does Baltimore and Detroit. Brazil doesn't have a "gun culture" like the
US, Canada, Iceland, Norway, or Czech Republic.
I found this clip by a German sociologist.