The two next big social issues will most unquestionably be the death penalty and gun control, without any doubt whatsoever. Just give it a little bit of time to mature, as with marriage equality. And maybe these issues won't need 50 years either, but rather some 11-19 or something. Future history writing usually do surprise us, especially so in this modern day of robotics and self-driving cars.
Okey, there are obviously more than just these two issues which are gonna be huge in the years going forward. Marihuana legalization and the end to mass incarceration are certainly gonna be just as important and epoque changing.
I could see death penalty abolition becoming a major movement soon. Gun control is a much bigger stretch.
Yep, agreed, but only for one reason: That it's written in the Constitution. Without the second amendment, I'm confident that the US currently would have had at least 90% less guns in circulation than it currently has.
Okey, that was perhaps a too bold statement. After all, USA has this pretty recent history of slavery/segregation/Jim Crow etcetera that makes my European experience a bit obsolete. Let me just say that it's complicated. As soon as the last remaining die hard racists will die out in 10-15-20 years from now, things will start to move really, really rapidly on this issue, even with all the baggage that is US history.
Well, regarding the death penalty, the change is already slowly and quietly taking place.
A lot of people aren't aware that executions have basically fallen off a cliff in terms of frequency over the last decade.
Gun control is an issue that there can be trimming around the edges of, but Americans
love guns. This is a hard thing to get around. This is definitely the time to push for reform to the criminal justice system and to drug laws, but gun control is a non-starter.
