Poll: causes of violence

violent-video-games-flickr-nwsThis is a complicated question. Ours is a huge nation, and there are definitely issues with violence in parts of it. We have drugs. We have gangs. We have thousands of people using psychotropic drugs.

So what is the cause? We, Americans, are a kind, generous people, and yet our homicide rate is still 3.82 per every 100,000 people.

Why? Some common causes are listed below, but I get the feeling that the question is more complicated than just a simple answer.

Take the poll, and let’s explore further in comments.

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6 thoughts on “Poll: causes of violence”

  1. All those things are symptoms, not causes. Government “education” has been terribly successful at its original purpose, to create a population unwilling/unable to assume personal responsibility for themselves, to rationally govern themselves. Critical thinking and any option to question the authority of the rulers has been systematically replaced with the belief that everything is someone else’s fault, that the world owes them a living, and that they actually should live at the expense of others – with little or no concern over who these others might be.

    Some escape this indoctrination, of course, but large proportion of people are tainted with this socialist/marxist pollution to some degree or another – even while they hold jobs and raise their families – all too often looking to the government to solve their problems and provide free stuff or “protection.”

    The cause of human violence is human nature that is not tempered with self government, self control, self responsibility – enlightened self interest.

  2. What ML said, though I will add that the long-standing ‘war on drugs’ has had a terribly distorting effect on crime rates, particularly murder. And we’ve had it very soft in that regard – what the DEA has done to some societies in central and south america would be grounds for real war if the countries were more evenly matched.

  3. I’d love to see what the “Other” choice contains. I chose “Other” and entered “government” as my candidate. I have ample evidence to back that up. If you look at each of the choices listed, for most you can make a strong case that government has either created or exacerbated these factors. That’s why I have taken to tagging all my Facebook postings with the derivative “Furthermore, I consider that government must be destroyed”.

  4. All of the above, along with…
    Greed and laziness. The perception the only/easiest way to get what you want is to take it. The idea that the only option is “kill or be killed”. The social acceptance of the criminal and violent criminal lifestyle. The war on drugs has taken gangs from controlling neighborhoods to controlling countries. We should try Portugal’s approach. Could it be worse than the status quo?

  5. First, across most of the U.S. violent crime has been dropping since 1993. A homicide rate of 3.82/100K is about half the international average.
    Drugs and gangs
    Compare Scarface and Breaking Bad to West Side Story and Blackboard Jungle. BITD gang members were teenagers, armed with cheap switchblade knives and an occasional zip-gun. Today they are adults armed with real military weaponry which the law-abiding can’t own. The difference is funding from the black market, resulting from the war on drugs.
    Availability of Guns
    Americans are buying guns hand-over-fist, and more people are taking up shooting, and the violent crime rate keeps dropping.
    Mental illness
    The vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent.
    Violent movies, TV shows, and video games.
    The first, first-person shooter videogame was Doom. It premiered in 1993. The violent crime rate has been dropping ever since. So either violent games and entertainment aren’t causing a change in violence, or the change is inverse.
    Poverty
    It isn’t the poor who are committing most murders, it’s the relatively wealthy people employed in the black market side of the war on drugs.

    OTOH MamaLiberty’s point stands, and contributes to the above.

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