People are killing People !

[kandrathe]

Why, then, are we experiencing lower rates of violent crime than previous ages, where moral ambiguity and detachment were viewed with suspicion, if not met with an angry mob?

Seems to me that the trend goes rather the other way, and that the occasional nutcase is just the odd exception, blown out of proportion both by the media and in contrast to our ordinarily placid lives.

-Jester

The totals are lower and the statistics look better, but the number of incidents of certain types are increasing. In the city were I live, you can attribute most murders to three sources; a. Drug turf wars, b. Domestic violence (esp. under the influence of drugs), and c. sociopathic violence. I see that categories a. and b. are decreasing, but c. seems to be increasing. We can disrupt the drug trade and target the trafficking of substances that are most lethal to the community(eg. Meth) which has a dual impact on violence. I believe that as long as our society embraces intoxication as entertainment we will have a built in level of violence, and also deaths due to driving while intoxicated. Anecdotally, I sense there is an increase in the last two years in robbery and burglary.

So, we are talking about the incidence of sociopathic violence randomly directed which would include some gang murders (like cold blooded initiation killings), school shootings, rape, and other random murders by seemingly detached or insane people. There was a double murder here in Minneapolis a couple years ago, where three young adults robbed two men at gunpoint having them kneel, then shot them in the back of the head. It was just cold. That qualifies in my book as deranged.

Here is a site I just googled looking at trends in violent crime over time; Josephson Institute - Center for Youth Ethics