A Flood Tide of Murder

[MrScorpio]

By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 10, 2011

By all means, condemn the hateful rhetoric that has poured so much poison into our political discourse. The crazies don’t kill in a vacuum, and the vilest of our political leaders and commentators deserve to be called to account for their demagoguery and the danger that comes with it. But that’s the easy part.

If we want to reverse the flood tide of killing in this country, we’ll have to do a hell of a lot more than bad-mouth a few sorry politicians and lame-brained talking heads. We need to face up to the fact that this is an insanely violent society. The vitriol that has become an integral part of our political rhetoric, most egregiously from the right, is just one of the myriad contributing factors in a society saturated in blood.

According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, more than a million people have been killed with guns in the United States since 1968, when Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were killed. That figure includes suicides and accidental deaths. But homicides, deliberate killings, are a perennial scourge, and not just with guns.

Excluding the people killed in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, more than 150,000 Americans have been murdered since the beginning of the 21st century. This endlessly proliferating parade of death, which does not spare women or children, ought to make our knees go weak. But we never even notice most of the killings. Homicide is white noise in this society.

The Rest: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/opinion/11herbert.html?_r=1&hp

[LisaL]

1. Sad but true.

[leftstreet]

2. What bullshit. Violent crime in the US is actually DOWN n/t

[LisaL]

3. Down from what?

[leftstreet]

4. Way, way down from the 70s and back

[LisaL]

5. Even if its down doesn't mean it's low.

“When you look at the rates of homicide without guns in the U.S. it’s only slightly higher than in Canada,” says Ryerson University professor Wendy Cukier, author of The Global Gun Epidemic. “But rates of homicide with guns are much higher. It shows that the availability of guns is very important.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/920205--lax-gun-laws-prove-deadly-in-the-u-s

[beevul]

6. Ahem.

Gun homicides are at a 30-ish year low, iirc, while gun ownership is at an all time high.


The article left that out.

[LisaL]

7. I am looking at the graph (see link)

and it only goes to 2005 but in 2005 homicide rate by gun appears to be very similar to that in 1976. Also, there are fluctuations over the years, so even if it fell in 2010 compared to 2005 (and please provide a link for that), what does that prove, exactly?
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/weapons.cfm

[MrScorpio]

8. Gun homicides peaked in the mid 90's, due to the crack epidemic

And the rate has been sinking since, yes…

But, here's the latest rake of gun homicides by country, check out the top 10:

Rank Countries Amount
# 1 South Africa: 31,918 (The world's' largest crime epidemic)
# 2 Colombia: 21,898 (A drug fueled civil war)
# 3 Thailand: 20,032 (More drugs and more crime)
# 4 United States: 9,369 (We're #4!)
# 5 Philippines: 7,708 (Civil strife and drugs)
# 6 Mexico: 2,606 (Civil strife and drugs)
# 7 Slovakia: 2,356
# 8 El Salvador: 1,441
# 9 Zimbabwe: 598
# 10 Peru: 442

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-crime-murders-with-firearms

I wonder why America STILL has numbers akin to third world nations that are going through drug fueled civil wars?

If we're number four, our murder rate by firearms (which is still in the thousands) is much too high .

[beevul]

9. Because we have our own drug fueled wars.

Because we have our own drug fueled wars, for one.

[Hannah Bell]

10. maybe because 1 in 18 US adult males is behind bars or on parole?