It is a problem but it does vary a lot in different places. Where our kids moved in Europe (even in Greece and Croatia) people are a lot more traditionalist—it helps to be a smaller country without having to constantly pretend to be cosmopolitan and obsessing over the made up number of GDP, at least the useless nominal GDP that gets artificial pushed up by all the bribes, government deficit spending and illegal alien crossings the woke corporations pay politicians to juice up their profits. And having multiple parties instead of just a pair of easily bribed two-parties helps too, it’s like what George Carlin pointed out years ago. Even France, Germany and Sweden of all places are a lot more conservative than we ever expected before we did import-export and our relatives moved there, part of it is they have real non-standard parties that force the mainstream uniparties to be honest.
And the people in general are a lot less hesitant to go out on the streets when the leaders put oligarch interests over their own, the French protests for ex. weren’t about retirement age so much as they forced the government to halt all mosque funding, close the mosques and rapidly kick the muzzies out—over half a million have been forced out in just the past year, and fast rising. The Syrian refugees recently got their status revoked and are getting kicked out from Germany and Sweden, it’s part because the street protests and non-mainstream parties demolished the uniparties in the regional elections. (Plus having to take in 10 million east Europeans from Ukraine and Russia fighting forces the issue)
Even gun rights are much better protected in the EU than we ever imagined, Scandinavia of all places has high rates of gun ownership and there are more gun owners and regular sport shooters in France, Germany, Belgium and even the Netherlands and Italy than we ever imagined. Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and even Greece have thriving gun clubs, and of course Austria and especially Switzerland have great respect for well trained firearms owners and users. They place a huge premium of course on training and there’s a tough licensing exam and policy, it’s not easy to translate overseas but well trained gun owners with trigger discipline have high social status. And it’s one of the reasons why the top Olympic shooting champions and manufacturers are in European countries, the whole idea of Europe as anti-gun is a total myth, some of our best experiences on the range have been on our European business trips.
Even Brazil of all places surprised us, it’s a country full of Big Business oligarchs that thinks itself cosmopolitan, a lot like the US. But South Brazil is a lot more regional flavored and proud of it, and they don’t just passively sit by when Big Business oligarchs try to flood them and their communities. Part of our family moved to rural regions in the southern portion and it’s one of the most conservative places (in the true traditional sense) we’ve ever been to, and far better to raise kids in.
Very interesting Javeth. Thank you. Most of the articles out there just don’t tell the truth and what is happening day to day in other countries. If I believed everything I read on the internet, I would think Europe is all communist and taking in as many migrants as they can and forcing their own citizens to support them. An that guns were few and far between.