>The rest of your comment feels like it's from the perspective of someone who's not tried these lifestyles, or is naive to their costs.

This couldn't be further from the truth. I was born and raised in the midwest, and founded my career there. I raised my family there for some time as well (and you may be suprised, but my brown wife and half brown daughter were never mistreated because of their race, even in our white town I (white guy) was the only one of us to ever receive scornful racial slur said to me). There was never a single 'shooting' you are so worried about at my school, or any of the surrounding ones. The only school where I can think of where that even happens is the closest big city. The most violence I ever saw were a few consensual fist-fights amongst middle and high schoolers, which always ended when one opponent gave up.

My parents were school teachers. Which in rural America is to say, they made barely more than a factory worker. Like the factory workers, we had a single family home, health care, and I received such a good education at my shitty midwestern public school. With that rural ('free') public school education I received a full scholarship to a top 10 engineering school in the US.

>Living in the Midwest subjects you to intense levels of religiosity, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and a thorough lack of multiculturalism

This is utter bullshit, have you ever lived in the midwest? I experienced none of this in Chicago, in fact in many areas I was minority as a white person. One neighborhood I lived in on the north side, probably half the people were LGBTQ. I worked extensively with people of all nationalities; in fact most business owners I met in my line of work came from either 1st or 2nd generation immigrants.

Yes I lived most my life in the US (although I have lived and fought in 3rd world and married a 3rd world national). I used a bike exclusively for 5+ years. I exclusively biked in Chicago, which is a walkable Midwest city, and had healthcare/education/decent apartment all for ~75th percentile wage. I was hurt a few times on a bicycle but never murdered. Were I to have owned a gun while in Chicago, I thankly never would have had occasion to have used it, because unless I was dumb enough to sell drugs on the south side no one had any interest in murdering me.

>A nation without equal access to reproductive freedom teaches each of its citizens that women do not have a fundamental right to control their bodies.

There are plenty of states in Europe too with reproductive rights controversy, such as Poland. To suggest contraceptives or abortion are inaccessible in US is just fabrication.

>The holocaust really has no relevance to gun policy.

It does if you want people to have some sort of defense to soldiers, even if it means dying on their feet instead of their knees. The ghetto uprising held off the Nazis for days and that was under incredibly unfavorable gun policy. When the Russians attempted this same genocide in Chechnya, widespread arms in Chechen hands prevented a holocaust sort of scenario and in fact the Chechens even gained independence for some time. And in the French underground, policies restricting arms to civilians in France played significant factor in issues with arming the underground (who helped liberate Paris from holocaust causing Nazis).

>garbage pro-gun rhetoric we're hoping to escape by leaving.

You haven't escaped it. People are printing FGC-9 and other home manufactured firearms in the Netherlands as we speak.
And jail sentence is very lax/minimal there compared to US, so you can be assured those trading in arms in Netherlands are really not worried about being caught. Here is example of people selling them in NL on insta [0]. Oh and ammo -- don't worry it can easily be made from completely unregulated components in EU, although mostly only people in EU interested in firearms know about this.

Anyway, have fun in Netherlands. You do have my jealousy for the experience. It's always fun experiencing life in new places, and I hope it is a great time for you.

[0] https://twitter.com/Xaniken/status/1345308913189715970/photo...