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Has our aversion towards violence contributed to the rise of more serious violence ?
I think so. We have a whole generation of kids that were given "time outs" for breaking household rules and now many are out of control.
The same has been happening for a long time where petty crime is started at a young age and there are few consequences so the kid ups the anti until they get into real trouble with the law.
How about capital punishment? No one wants to send an accused man that might be innocent to his death but there are cases that prove guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt and or the accused admits his guilt. Why do we allow that type of person to sit on death row for years if not decades as they move through the appeals process?
Today we have mass shooters where there is no doubt as to who pulled the trigger. How about the Boston Marathon bomber? If these people survive their death dealing of innocent people why do we show them so much kindness?
Our aversion to violence allows the violent to go on to hurt even more people.
If the law came down on criminals harder or at least have the time fit the crime we would have less people acting in criminal ways. There are so many cases where people that are guilty of crimes get away with a reduced sentence while their victim is left to pick up the pieces. Why?
If you do the crime then you do the time.
Sounds like you would be happier living in a place like the Philippines! Under that kind of justice system, people are permitted to judge and execute drug dealers on the spot!! No expensive court hearings, or long prison terms!
So I'm sure everyone here can agree that in the past it was far more acceptable to get into a good old fashioned fistfight in the US of A . Including educational institutions for that matter .
My grandad and even my father told me plenty of tales concerning fights they got into at school and how they were handled . Virtually all of them a lot less seriously than now and said age wasn't the age of Dylan Klebolds either ...
So what I'm getting at is do y'all think it would be better for American society if we were to return the practice of good old fashioned violence to its hallowed place ? Or is the current path we're treading on sufficient enough and/or better than the ways of old ?
I don't understand your assumptions, given how the incident of violent crime has plunged over the past several of decades. This is statistical fact. The murder rate in this country is roughly half what it was 1980 and 54% of what it was in 1991. We have not seen rates this low since the early 60s.
I don't understand your assumptions, given how the incident of violent crime has plunged over the past several of decades. This is statistical fact. The murder rate in this country is roughly half what it was 1980 and 54% of what it was in 1991. We have not seen rates this low since the early 60s.
According to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program the rate of homicides per 100,000 was 5.1 And in 2016 it was 5.3.
There was a rise and the a drop but violence is very much a part of our lives. In my lifetime of seven decades what I see as different is the nature of the violence. It's more hideous, I think, than it was in the Sixties.
Location: Appalachian New York, Formerly Louisiana
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MinivanDriver
I don't understand your assumptions, given how the incident of violent crime has plunged over the past several of decades. This is statistical fact. The murder rate in this country is roughly half what it was 1980 and 54% of what it was in 1991. We have not seen rates this low since the early 60s.
My grandad and even my father told me plenty of tales concerning fights they got into at school and how they were handled . Virtually all of them a lot less seriously than now and said age wasn't the age of Dylan Klebolds either ...
My youngest son’s dad is a bit older than I. He says that when he was in high school, if two boys got in a fight they’d get sent to see the Coach, who would pull out the boxing gloves & tell them to “pull em on; let’s finish this the right way”.
He said he’d only get in trouble with his dad for getting in a fight if he lost. If his dad found out he lost a fight; out came the gloves again & he’d have to spar with his older brother (who was 11 years older than he).
I think we do our young boys a great disservice at an age much younger than high school, however; there are 3rd graders getting suspended for throwing a snowball on the playground for craps sake. 6 hours of school plus 6 hours of video games for a kid who’s DNA is designed for enough energy for hunting, farming, building, etc ... results in a kid on ADHD meds, antidepressants & anti anxiety meds.
There is an ominous side to these meds. They can’t differentiate between pathological fear & sadness & a having a conscience. Fear of social rejection can shape a child’s behavior but the meds flatten fear. Regret & remorse shape our ability to have empathy & sympathy ... but the meds flatten all sadness, including things we SHOULD be sad about.
An adult would cope better but a kid is developing their own conscience & a healthy respect for dangerous activities. The meds are effectively preventing them from feeling any boundaries. “Do unto others” has no meaning when you can’t be sad about what was done to you.
Add to that the ADHD meds which mitigate fight or flight & you have created an antisocial ticking time bomb that’s not afraid of consequences or even of dying, for that matter.
According to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program the rate of homicides per 100,000 was 5.1 And in 2016 it was 5.3.
There was a rise and the a drop but violence is very much a part of our lives. In my lifetime of seven decades what I see as different is the nature of the violence. It's more hideous, I think, than it was in the Sixties.
It is no more or less hideous. That is a subjective opinion on your part, chiefly because the reporting standards for the nature of those murders has changed. I worked at a daily newspaper in the 80s, and we had a standard called the Corn Flakes Rule. If it was a detail that people didn't want to read while eating their breakfast, we omitted it. That standard just doesn't exist today.
However, using that same chart you linked, 1994 had one murder for every 10,441 people. In 1970, it was one murder for every 12,711 people. Meanwhile, in 2016, it's one murder for every 18,732 people. So by any statistical measure, the belief that violent crime is worse than it was a generation or two ago is an incorrect one.
Aren't the statistics adjusted for per capita rates, Minivan Driver? Seems they adjust for the number per 100,000. Check again.
I don't know. When it comes to interpreting crime statistics there are so many variables. I do understand that. And while anecdotes aren't statistics they can give evidence of trends.
My scope of observation is quite a few decades longer than yours and I realize that my perception is anecdotal. But I'm far from sheltered or limited in my ability to observe and every town I know of that used to have no police, whose jails stood empty and where people didn't need to lock their doors has an increase in crime. Some of those crimes have been far afield of the old break-ins and burglaries.
Just a casual google of curiosity produces these few articles:
I recognize the sensationalism of the headline wording but they do sell and these acts against people are disturbingly sensational. In the day the Corn Flakes Rule may have prevented the average person from reading the facts with their breakfast but it, in no way, prevented word-of-mouth which is how most people get the details of their local news.
Many of the types of crimes I'm reading about just in rural southern MN would have been unthinkable a hundred years ago. "Shocking" is probably a good word.
Aren't the statistics adjusted for per capita rates, Minivan Driver? Seems they adjust for the number per 100,000. Check again.
I don't know. When it comes to interpreting crime statistics there are so many variables. I do understand that. And while anecdotes aren't statistics they can give evidence of trends.
My scope of observation is quite a few decades longer than yours and I realize that my perception is anecdotal. But I'm far from sheltered or limited in my ability to observe and every town I know of that used to have no police, whose jails stood empty and where people didn't need to lock their doors has an increase in crime. Some of those crimes have been far afield of the old break-ins and burglaries.
Just a casual google of curiosity produces these few articles:
I recognize the sensationalism of the headline wording but they do sell and these acts against people are disturbingly sensational. In the day the Corn Flakes Rule may have prevented the average person from reading the facts with their breakfast but it, in no way, prevented word-of-mouth which is how most people get the details of their local news.
Many of the types of crimes I'm reading about just in rural southern MN would have been unthinkable a hundred years ago. "Shocking" is probably a good word.
I don't think there's much mystery to taking the total population and dividing it by total number of murders.
Again, the murder rates have not been this low since the early 60s. There is literally no other way to interpret this.
We celebrate the people who resorted to violence, in order for America to break off from England, this was basically a violent overthrow of a sitting govt, so Im not sure how we could ever avoid it, it played a huge part in our history, just imagine if none of the people back then were willing to resort to violence!
The notion that America is a violent culture because the nation was born of a violent revolution is convenient, but untrue and unproductive as relates to reducing violence.
Violence is a feature of every society on Earth, and if America experiences more violence than another nation, it is because of social factors that are much more immediate than a war 250 years ago.
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