American author and school safety activist Andrew Pollack has recently spent his vacation in Budapest, Hungary and he shared his experiences with the public on X (formerly, Twitter). The post garnered a considerable amount of attention, receiving 24,300 likes, 2.7 million views, and around 3,000 comments in the three days it’s been online.
Pollack evidently thinks very highly of our country. As he put it, he was shocked by the cleanliness of the streets of Budapest, as well as the beautiful architecture and the friendliness of the citizens. He attributes all this to ‘enforcing borders, prosecuting criminals and not embracing the replacement of your own people’, which he believes are the keys to ‘achieving a society as peaceful as this’.
For contrast, he brings up the major, populous cities in the United States, typically run by Democrat municipal leadership (just as Budapest, the city Pollack visited, is currently run by a liberal mayor, by the way).
In major cities in the US, homicides rose by 42.6 per cent between 2019 and 2022, up to 9,138 cases for 2022,
according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association’s numbers. MCCA is an organisation of police executives from major cities across the US and Canada. Their report also reveals that, in the same timeframe, there has been a 13 per cent increase in robberies, 20 per cent increase in larceny, 21 per cent increase in motor vehicle theft, and a six per cent increase in residential burglaries.
Nationally, the latest data the World Bank’s Development Indicators database has for the US is still from 2021, which shows a nationwide homicide rate of 6.81 per 100,000 people, a 6.02 per cent increase from 2020.
In the meantime,
Hungary’s ranked in the 43rd lowest spot out of the 205 countries included on the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) list,
with only 0.8 annual homicides per 100,000 people. On the same list, the US is ranked the 154th lowest, with its 6.81 national murder rate.
Also, as per statistics released by the Ministry of Interior of Hungary, the total number of criminal acts recorded decreased in the country from 109,562 in 2013 to 38,103 in 2018.
Who Is Andrew Pollack?
Andrew Pollack became known to the American public for the most tragic reason. In February 2018, his 18-year-old daughter Meadow was murdered by a mass shooter at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The next year, he co-authored a book with education expert Max Eden, titled Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created The Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students.
What sets him apart from other school safety activists is that, being a right-wing conservative in the US, he opposes strict gun control measures. Instead, his proposed solution to prevent mass shootings at schools is arming teachers, along with additional safety measures, such as metal detectors at school entrances. Pollack had a chance to share his vision with President Trump at a White House ‘listening session’ only weeks after the tragic death of his daughter, also in February 2018. He also spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
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