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The crime situation was particularly bad in Brazil when Jair Bolsonaro entered office. Brazil had one of the highest homicide rates in the developed world, with 27.8 homicides per 100,000 people. (In the United States, the same figure is 5 per 100,000 people.) Around 70 per cent of homicides were committed with firearms.
The Bolsonaro government quickly moved to make no less than 32 changes to Brazilian gun laws, including simplifying the background screening procedure, legalising the purchase of more powerful guns, reducing licensing costs, deregulating gun carry and increasing the legal maximum of purchasable ammunition one hundredfold (!). As a result, gun ownership boomed in Brazil. The number of licensed, legally purchased guns more than doubled after Bolsonaro’s reforms.
Results? The homicide rate has fallen by 34 per cent, to 18.5 homicides per 100,000 people in the past three years.
A few weeks ago, an image went viral. In Belgium a migrant used the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to cook an omelette. For many, the desecration brought to mind a quote from French author Jean Raspail, written in 1973 in his novel Camp of the Saints, about a sudden invasion of Muslim, Indian and African migrants into France:
“Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door.”
“Beware of two errors: despising the world God sustains, or worshipping the culture He restrains.”
— Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace Vol. 1, Ch. 30
"[Successful NY Mayoral candidate] Mamdani built his campaign on the infrastructure of the Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA and its city allies can dispatch activists across New York and, with a network of progressive partner organizations, can mobilize young people, get out the vote, and do the work of door-to-door politics.
"We saw this dynamic many times in the twentieth century: socialists rise to power, their policies degrade the quality of life, and, as they enter the endgame, they tighten their grip on power and offload resentments onto their ideological, racial, and economic enemies.
"...the twentieth century taught us that left-wing voters have extraordinary defenses against reality."
-- Christopher Rufo
