I know I talk about this all the time, but indulge me for a minute. Why do people insist that the United States has become more violent over the past 30 years or so? Here’s yet another example. SI writer Peter King wrote in favor of gun control (obviously I agree with him) and got this as a response from some winger reader:
The fact is, in the past 30 years, these laws have increased exponentially, but so has gun violence…
(King didn’t challenge him on this claim about gun violence.)
In fact, the CDC reports that gun deaths fell from 14.8 per 100,000 in 1981 to 10.3 in 2007 (the most recent year for which statistics are available). That’s about a 30% drop. It’s disproportionately gun-related homicides that fell — from 6.58 to 4.19, about a 36% drop.
Sometimes I feel that this kind of ignorance dooms our society.
Cain
Portland has the lowest crime rate since the ’60s. We’re doing pretty good, but I think people still think crime is too high.
I find that weird, a lot of people weren’t around in the 40s and 50s where people could leave their doors unlocked (or so they claimed) so I don’t see why they might feel nostalgic for that era..
I’m guessing our wonderful press loves to blow up anything into something huge.
Big Baby DougJ
I actually think we might eventually get back to that in terms of crime. The trend is really positive.
Hunter Gathers
When was the last time that you watched your local newscast? If it bleeds, it leads. If the only source of news you consumed was your local 6 p.m. newscast, you would be convinced that hoards of young black men were coming to break into your house, rape your wife and children and steal your valuables before he brutally murdered you.
fasteddie9318
OK, sure, I mean, if you want to get in the deep weeds and start involving “facts” and “numbers” and whatever, then…hey! Sarah Palin’s bus just pulled out! ZOMG Rick Perry is SUCH! A! MAN! Kidnapped white girl! SHARKS! DEAD BODIES! Shiny things! SQUIRREL!
/media
Cain
It’s also because people seem to be stuck in the late 70s and early 80s when crime was high, and black men were everywhere looking at white women.
Spaghetti Lee
I think a sort of non-malicious explanation is that institutions like the media, especially more pedestrian media like the local news, are always a bit behind the times. A lot of the people making editorial decisions were probably breaking into the industry in the 80’s/early 90’s, when crime was a much bigger deal, so maybe they just subconsciously weight it more that way.
But for random commenters, a lot of it is the great bullshit ball of right wing mythology about the upcoming Great Race War and their heroic role within it. Without something like that to believe in, their lives are essentially meaningless.
The Dangerman
Can’t fault the winger for quoting the wrong statistic; I’m sure he heard it from “trusted source” like Rush or Fox.
Unless it’s LA and it’s a car chase; shit, nothing gets in the way of a car chase.
Comrade Mary
Let alone the claim of an “exponential” increase. You keep using that word, Mr. Worried White Guy, but I do not think it means what you think it means.
kdaug
-Plato
As it always was. Facts need not intrude.
Cowbelle
Three things combine:
1. The news media.
2. Entertainment, which is increasingly blood-soaked and violent, which gives people the impression that they’re seeing a lot more murders and deaths than really happened.
3. Gun crime is a subtle racist dog whistle, and we’re supposed to think of black or brown men killing white people.
Combined together, this why the vast majority of Americans think that crime is going up in this country when it’s actually being going way down.
MattR
DougJ – You have obviously forgotten that those numbers are manipulated by the DFHs in the CDC in order to justify further gun control laws.
burnspbesq
Gun violence is down because gun ownership is up. Punks are rational actors. They’re less likely to start something when they know the intended victim might be packing.
/NRA shill
Cain
@Cowbelle:
Again, I think this comes from all the coverage of gangs in various places, LA being the foremost back in mid 80s to early 90s.
Ian
O/T but I am watching msnbc, and I think Ed Schultz is really shrill. And Lawrence Odonnel is awful. Just awful. Why does Maddow have to be stuck in the middle of this shit sandwhich?
+handle
Yutsano
@MattR: And sharia. One should never lose sight of teh ebil that is sharia.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hunter Gathers:
DING DING DING DING DING!
The perception that crime is rampant is due to local TV news reporting crime totally out of proportion to its occurrence.
PeakVT
Why do people insist that the United States has become more violent over the past 30 years or so?
The media is the main reason, but I wonder if the number of mass killings is driving this. They seem just as prevalent, while it at the same time “inner city” violence has plummeted.
…. Ok, I decided to not be completely lazy and utilize this new-fangled internet thingy. Politifact checked out the numbers for mass killings, and they have remained roughly steady since the early 1990s.
Also, too: peak lead exposure and crime rates.
MattR
@Yutsano: How could I forget, especially since I just got home from this week’s meeting?
Yutsano
@MattR: Chloe distracted you. Yeah, that’s the ticket. :)
catdevotee
The other factor is population increase. My small town perceives a jump in crime, but I think it’s because the population has doubled in a few decades. More people equals more incidents of criminal behavior. According to the police blotter, published in the local paper, most crimes are still of the trespassing(i.e. in a park after hours) or minor with liquor variety. But I hear some people darkly talking about having to lock their doors now because of all the crime – this is usually accompanied by a mention of the undesirables who have moved in.
catdevotee
I should also say that my town has a lot of retirees who have a pronounced “get off my lawn” attitude, and who are scared of their own shadows. When I canvassed during the ’08 campaign, people would literally hide behind their doors to speak to me…. I’m a small soft-spoken woman in my 60’s with a pacifist philosophy. It made me laugh that anyone would be afraid of me, but there you go.
Stefan
Humans are also very, very bad at estimating probability. If there’s one murder in a town of 100 people, and another murder in a town of 200 people, the people in the second town will feel equally at risk as the people in the first town, even though their odds of having been the murder victim are only half. But all they know is that there was a murder and they heard about it on the news, and jeez, it coulda just as easily been me, couldn’t it?
PanurgeATL
@Cain:
This makes sense culturally, too. To be a conservative could be framed as bold and independent-minded back then, so that’s what everybody did. Now everyone’s conservative and at the same time they imagine their conservatism is a bold striking out at Our Evil Hippie Overlords when they’re really just doing the Oligarchy’s bidding. It’s a kind of mass delusion.
Anne Laurie
@MattR:
Yeah, to us, that’s snark. But a couple years back on a public health blog, I was solemnly assured that “dozens” of non-white-gang-banger murders were being “covered up” every week by the DFH authorities just in the city of Memphis. In bigger, more dangerous cities, under the iron thumb of minority-and-criminal pampering lie-bruls, surely the yearly tally must run into the multiple hundreds! eleventy-one! ! And, no, these people were not joking — they seriously believed the untermenschen were so prolific that non-stop slaughter of this sort could go unremarked, except by the elite few, who “knew better” than to trust “government state-tistics“…
Bago
Yeah… Doesn’t make my friends any less dead though. This would be sort of a “keep struggling” argument, drawing ridicule and mockery upon the sort of machismo that ends at the tip of a barrel of a gun.
catdevotee
@Bago: I’m sorry for your loss… but… huh? I’m not sure where you’re going with this.
eemom
I loves ya Mick.
joel hanes
The top article right now on Sadly No! mocks “The American Thinker” for his post arguing that the gummint is covering up an epidemic of black-on-white crime.
MikeJ
@joel hanes: Edroso’s been on the beat for weeks.
Origuy
@Stefan: We evolved to live in small groups, of a few dozen or less. If a leopard took your neighbor’s child, your child was in danger and you had to kill the leopard. Now, if a child disappears in Maine, people in San Diego who hear about it react subconsciously as if it happened next door.
Arclite
I read a study a few years ago that showed between the mid 80s and the mid 2000s violent crime had dropped 30% or so. In that same period REPORTING on violent crime had increased three fold. When the reporting increases three fold, it doesn’t matter what the actual crime rates do, people will perceive an increase.
PurpleGirl
It’s not just the crime stories on the news or the dramas in movies or TV. It’s also the “documentary” types shows on TV.
There are dozens of them on various channels: A&E (L.A. gang shows, Border Wars); Discovery ID channel (reality shows like Who the Bleep Did I Marry, I (Almost) Got Away with It, Prison Wives, shows like Disappeared, 48 Hours, True Crime with Aphrodite Jones); the cable news channels; TruTV (the former Court TV), even National Geographic (Locked Up Abroad, Border Wars). And the shows are shown on multiple channels.
You get the feeling that you are surrounded by violence and crime.
John Puma
It’s called “proud and aggressive ignorance,” and, yes, it does doom us.
TenguPhule
What do you mean sometimes? ALmost half of our voting population is so insane that they should be put down like rabid cats to keep the madness from spreading.
kth
The exponential wave of gun-control legislation, also totally fictitious. What meager efforts have passed have been, iirc, have subsequently either been repealed, or struck down by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, a wave of conceal-carry laws across the red states. The right to strap on a lethal phallic symbol has never been stronger in this country.
Nemesis
Sha-doobie…Shattered, Shattered..
Sly
“Tonight at ten we’ll have an exclusive, in-depth report on a recent violent crime that occurred within a fifty mile radius of where you live, including interviews with investigators, family members of the victims, forensic psychiatrists, local politicians, and people who we just pulled off the street that have no direct relation to the case, but who’s ‘concerned despair’ our producer thinks will really play well in the 35-45 demographic. We now return to your regularly scheduled program.”
“Bad boys, bad boys… whatcha gonna do?”
lovable liberal
Sometimes?
The question is how to make money off the ignoramus fools.