Nice theory. The big differentiator for homicides is simply the number of firearms floating around in the United States. That's an enabler if there ever was one and violent crime is to some extent a natural outflow of that.
When the former USSR collapsed and the war in former Yugoslavia happened cheap arms flooded the market here and that caused an immediate rise in gun related crime. The fact that in the EU countries that neighbor each other can have very different gun laws is another reason why since the Schengen area opened up in some countries there are now substantially more guns than before. They are still illegal, but criminals don't actually care since they are already on the other side of the line and their competition has them too.
There have been shootouts between gangs with fully automatic weapons on the streets of Amsterdam (fortunately not many), and the police has also come under fire from gangs with machine guns during getaway attempts or murder attempts.
I am not sure if they will be able to put this genie back into the bottle. The gangs here are a lot harder this decade than they were 20 or 30 years ago, there are more of them and they are far more ruthless. Some samples: heads left in front of businesses to warn others about territory violations, murders of people who looked alike some criminal or drove the same car in broad daylight, parents slaughtered in front of their kids or in the schoolyard. It's not what it used to be, that's for sure.
A mix of both. Ex Yugo army set up shop in and around Amsterdam bringing manpower and weapons and collaborated with existing dutch crime rings who supplied money and local expertise. This is all fairly well documented now.
Nice theory. The big differentiator for homicides in the United States is proximity to the drug war.
There are more guns than humans in the United States. You'll find ownership of a gun and likelihood of committing homicide to correlate quite poorly; while ownership of a kilo of cocaine correlates quite strongly.
As you're indicating, in Europe, ownership of a kilo, a gun, and propensity to murder, all track quite closely.
This suggests a different set of policy-level decisions than the myopic focus on the tool of murder would.
The United States isn't close to the drug war it causes the drug war. Guns flow across the border in one direction and drugs flow the other way. Guns already inside the United States are of course going to be used in crime as well, of all kinds, not just in drug related crime.
Ownership of a gun and homicide correlate poorer than having a kilo of coke and homicide but still correlates a lot better than no gun and no coke.
When the former USSR collapsed and the war in former Yugoslavia happened cheap arms flooded the market here and that caused an immediate rise in gun related crime. The fact that in the EU countries that neighbor each other can have very different gun laws is another reason why since the Schengen area opened up in some countries there are now substantially more guns than before. They are still illegal, but criminals don't actually care since they are already on the other side of the line and their competition has them too.
There have been shootouts between gangs with fully automatic weapons on the streets of Amsterdam (fortunately not many), and the police has also come under fire from gangs with machine guns during getaway attempts or murder attempts.
I am not sure if they will be able to put this genie back into the bottle. The gangs here are a lot harder this decade than they were 20 or 30 years ago, there are more of them and they are far more ruthless. Some samples: heads left in front of businesses to warn others about territory violations, murders of people who looked alike some criminal or drove the same car in broad daylight, parents slaughtered in front of their kids or in the schoolyard. It's not what it used to be, that's for sure.