![\"\"](\"http:\/\/nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/12\/fo1217_childmurder940.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe massacre in Connecticut and other similar massacres have obscured in the public mind long-range trends: a recent decline in homicides and other violent crime, and a centuries-long decline in homicide and (possibly) in military violence.<\/p>\n
\n
First, the most horrifying crimes: the murder of children. These have declined, as this chart indicates.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Each death is a tragedy, but society is, overall, becoming less, not more, violent.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/Violence-Stylized-2-1024x702.png)
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
After rising in the 1960s and peaking around 1990, homicides in the United States have returned to the level of 1950.\u00a0Moreover, these declines continue long-term declines in American homicide rates.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/4\/48\/U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n
One reason \u00a0(but only a partial reason, is the increasing incarceration of criminals.\u00a0Other reasons are better policing and the decline of crack cocaine; but no one is really sure why there has been such a sudden and massive decline.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-ouBnETH5iXM\/ToK5mFs9fBI\/AAAAAAAAAhU\/NXGyb2TVd-A\/s1600\/homicide.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
There are also long-term declines in European homicide rates.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Stephen Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature<\/em> documents these declines and also, more speculatively, he sees millennia-long decline in military violence. That is less certain, but it is clear that in many pre-modern societies, a major portion of males meet a violent death.<\/p>\n \n The decline in homicides in Europe since the Middle Ages is part of the civilizing process, in which the violence and unruliness of young males is disciplined and restrained.<\/p>\n \n As to Lanza in Connecticut and other mass murderers: They certainly lack empathy, and the absence of affectionate fathers during childhood seems to be a major factor in the failure of males to develop empathy, so single-parent families do no bode well for the future. Males also feel they have to establish their identity, to prove they are somebody, and a few of them choose mass murder as a way of proving this \u2013 in vain, because almost no one remembers the names of the mass murderers.<\/p>\n \n One law about guns that might help is to require all gun owners to keep their guns, especially rifles, in a locked gun safe. If they do not, and someone uses the gun to commit a crime, the gun owner should also be criminally liable. This would help stop adolescents in a sudden passion from grabbing a gun and killing people. But restraining intelligent psychopaths like Breivik in Norway is very, very difficult, without creating a surveillance state that would bring its own problems.<\/p>\n The massacre in Connecticut and other similar massacres have obscured in the public mind long-range trends: a recent decline in homicides and other violent crime, and a centuries-long decline in homicide and (possibly) in military violence. First, the most horrifying crimes: the murder of children. These have declined, as this chart indicates. Each death is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,44,1],"tags":[688,689],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-masculinity","category-uncategorized","tag-homicide","tag-lanza","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"