Shootings occur in all kinds of areas in the major cities, but also in smaller towns. Sweden has also had a worrying number of bombs outside stairwells in residential areas and in detached houses. Therefore, the problems are not only concentrated in marginalized areas or what the Swedish Police call, particularly vulnerable areas. Per capita, Sweden has twice as many gang members as Mexico but you can hardly compare the gang structures in the two countries.
Although it happens that innocent people die or get injured, the acts are targeted at active gang members and, more recently, tragically, their families to a greater extent.
The problems are significant in the context of gang crime, but it's not like an ordinary person needs to be afraid of being out for a walk or being assaulted, robbed, or attacked by gangs. In Malmö, which is Sweden's third-largest city and is located near Copenhagen, gang problems have significantly decreased in recent years through Group Violence Intervention efforts.
I'm not trying to gloss over the problems, which are significant, but I understand that the authorities and communities have the will, knowledge, and resources to change the situation.
Next time some article about shootings in the US or shows up on HN, will people remember these exact points?
So many probably mostly Europeans and Australians have a completely unrealistic views on actual risk of getting harmed by guns in the US. Yes, they have many shootings there but just like in Sweden or pretty much anywhere in "the west" with gun violence, it is mostly criminals shooting each other not terrorists, mass shooters and the police shooting random people.
In places with better access to legal guns there is also often a huge portion of gun induced suicides that are thrown into the statistics for no good reason.
We are all most likely killed by someone close to use regardless of how, so pay attention who you and your loved ones hang out with.
We are all more likely to be killed by hands, feet, knifes, random tools than by the evil AR-15 or a similar type of rifle.
The chance of even getting harms by a gun is incredibly small if you aren't a criminal and you dont point a gun at yourself, its basically a non-existing risk.
> it is mostly criminals shooting each other not terrorists
Nobody is born a criminal. Gang violence is expanding like a plague because of the collapse of society / government / whatever you want to call it in the lives of young people. A young person (usually adolescent) who is victimized by criminal gangs (and they need victims to exist) will not receive any protection or help from neither the police, the military, the schools, parents, family or anybody. Usually they're told just to take it and keep their head down. Criminals exploit boys by having them run errands or just squeeze them for money, girls are instead exploited sexually.
The civil society has nothing but bottomless contempt and even outright hatred towards teenage boys, so there is no dignified route of life for them unless they come from one of the few families that care for their future. Joining a gang becomes the easy way for them to find some dignity and respect among their peers and even in civil society. This has been going on for decades among the poorest in places such as the US, but now it happens to "middle-class" boys in Sweden and other places, because this middle class would rather see their own children be victimized or killed than make any effort to pass on their middle-class status to their kids. So it's not "mostly criminals shooting each other".
Very comparable in the Netherlands, fortunately for now still limited to the larger cities but it is also slowly spreading out from there. Most of this is drug related.
Perhaps, but we need to be careful what conclusions (and reactions) we take from that.
People from all walks of life make regular usage of recreational intoxicants, often perfectly legally. Huge, legitimate global industries are dedicated to it. If that association were the primary basis upon which to categorise as a gang, or as morally corrupt, then the Champagne region of France, and the Coca-Cola Corp (associate and maker of many an alcoholic beverage, among their giant stable of products), would be among the world's biggest "gangs". And yes, in some ways they are! but that's another matter.
So, despite the common 'drug' associations of gangs, the unique commonalities which define criminal gangs lie elsewhere, and thus a primary focus upon intoxicants, when attempting to address gang criminality - such as the longterm ineffective War-on-Drugs rhetoric - is doomed to failure, as the proof of reality shows.
Magically take away all drugs and alcohol overnight, and we'd still have a disenfranchised minority social underbelly, realising their discontent in all-new and equally potentially harmful ways.
Yes, that whole war-on-drugs thing was a giant mistake.
And agreed that there is a problem - now - but resolving that will be costly and time consuming and will require a lot of goodwill from all of the parties involved. I've worked in the mailroom of a bank, which was probably close to 70% minorities and it was awesome: I've never seen so much camaraderie anywhere else that I've worked. Turkish neighbors are great people, the young and coming Dutch kids living one door down not so much (vandalizing the property and causing a lot of trouble). It all depends and they're all individuals, as long as people paint whole groups with a single brush it can't ever work.
But free up enough money for education and you just might turn this around. Interesting tidbit: racism is everywhere I've lived, but it all depends on where on the color chart you are offset towards the 'white' end if you have more money and towards the left if you are poorer. It's pretty wild to see how universal this is, I've observed it pretty much everywhere that I've lived, even in places where people of color where the majority. They did the exact same thing. Baffling.
Usage is not the driver. It's the prosecution of drug production and distribution. Netherlands "allow" (yes, it's more complicated, but close enough) drug use, but producing drugs is forbidden. So, who supplies the drugs that people are allowed to consume? Gangs. Sweden has taken the war on drugs and dialed it up to 11, with the result that it has turned into a real war. And each time they dial it up even more you get another round of escalations.
The Netherlands have a big residential bombing issue as well. This issue is not fueled by migration. It's the moralizing prohibition of hard drugs followed by exploding profits, violent market takeovers, corruption and erratic enforcement sparking territorial runs.
Although it happens that innocent people die or get injured, the acts are targeted at active gang members and, more recently, tragically, their families to a greater extent.
The problems are significant in the context of gang crime, but it's not like an ordinary person needs to be afraid of being out for a walk or being assaulted, robbed, or attacked by gangs. In Malmö, which is Sweden's third-largest city and is located near Copenhagen, gang problems have significantly decreased in recent years through Group Violence Intervention efforts.
I'm not trying to gloss over the problems, which are significant, but I understand that the authorities and communities have the will, knowledge, and resources to change the situation.