Increasing Violence?

We are now forty-eight hours into the news cycle for the tragedy in Arizona. I hear many commentators and religious leaders decrying the increasing violence in our culture, a common refrain each time an event like this occurs. Without diminishing the suffering and sorrow of those involved, it is important to keep in mind a larger context.

Here are two charts. The first one shows the rate of murders per 100,000 people. Note that the 2009 murder rate (5.0) is less than half its all-time high in 1980 (10.2). It is the lowest since 1964.

The second chart shows violent crimes per 1,000 persons. These are not crimes reported to police. These are people reporting victimization through the National Crime Victimization Survey administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. It is considered the most reliable indicator of actual incidents. Note that the 2009 rate (17.1) is less than one-third of the all-time high rate (51.7) in 1979. It is the lowest since the survey began in 1973.

We are not in an era of increasing violence.

Furthermore, it seems to be taken for granted by many that this was a politically motivated event. Some want to see a cause-and-effect relationship between rancorous politics and this killing. So far, I haven't seen much that confirms this. The killer appears not to have been motivated by opposition to health care legislation or raising taxes. He was not irritated about illiteracy, grammar, and language. Every indication is that he is suffering from severe mental illness.

I think we should grieve this tragedy and comfort those who mourn. But if we are going to address societal problems well, we must resist the impulse to fly off into emotional and ideological frenzies and actually address the problems that face us. So far, this incident says far more to me about mental health care and access to firearms than it does about politics.

Grace and peace to those whose lives have been so painfully touched by this horrific attack.

Comments

[Peggy]

Thanks for this, Mike ... I posted a link to it from my Facebook page.

[Jeff L]

Michael,
you're comparing apples and oranges. How about statistics and numbers on things like:
number of death threats received by representatives and senators in 2000 and 2010;
number of people who brought handguns to town hall meetings staged by congresspersons in 2000 and 2010;
number of times candidates for Congress talked about "Second Amendment solutions" to the problems of government or the number of times the governor of Texas asserted the right of Texas to secede from the Union?

You get the drift.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Jeff, as bad as these things may be, none of them are acts of violence.

And missing from your list ...

Last month, the President analogizing of Republicans to hostage taking terrorists in their insistence on across the board tax cuts.

Candidate Obama saying on the campaign trail, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

Bumper stickers on cars in my neighborhood (voted 94% Obama) with a cross-hairs over George Bushes face and the message "Regime Change."

The publication by my denomination (PCUSA) of "Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action" by David Ray Griffin, "documenting" how the World Trade Center wasn't brought down by terrorists but was a Bush backed CIA plot ... including the planting of explosives in the building ... to create a pre-text for war.

Labeling any one who challenges climate change issues as a climate change denier, implicitly, and at time explicitly, connecting them with holocaust deniers.

I can go on.

Partisans on all sides use this kind of inflammatory rhetoric. Do I agree that we should work to tone it down. Absolutely. But when you or others say this is your concern and then A) you identify only conservatives as the offenders and B) claim this attack on the congresswomen was politically motivated, it strike me as disingenuous. There is zero evidence that politics or the vitriolic environment had ANYTHING to with the attackers actions. He is a paranoid schizophrenic. A friend today was highlighting that the guy knew nothing about politics and didn't follow it. In all of his ramblings there is no mention of Obama, health care, or taxes. His actions might just have easily been turned on school administrator as we are finding out.

Portraying conservatives as the lone instigators of a vitriolic climate and then maintaining it was the cause of Saturday's tragedy is a politically calculated strategy of hatemongering done on the backs of people who undergoing horrible grief and sorrow. It is an attempt by the left to marginalize political opponents through demonization. It is an extension of the vitriolic environment, not indication of desire to depart from it. It is transparent to all but the most die hard liberals that this is the case, and if liberal Dems want to continue to push themselves to the margins, all they need to do is keep pressing this argument. Most of the public can see otherwise.