Homicide Narrative
More than 20,000 people die by the hands of another in the US each year. About 60% of homicides occur in families. Males account for about 90% of all homicides. Explaining these large numbers requires many sources of information and many approaches.
Homicides may look alike because of weapons used. Homicides may have the same motives shared by perpetrators, but no two homicides occur exactly alike for the exact same motives. Although, some are more alike than others. Relationships between the victim and the perpetrator may show commonalities in family homicides, business relationships, and street homicides.
Two common approaches for understanding homicide include what I call the "external view" and the "internal view." I use the same classification for explaining suicide. The external view seeks to explain homicide by exploring the perpetrator's immediate environment, biography, and more. The internal view seeks to explain homicide by psychotically models for violent behavior. Freudian and Behaviorist models as well as others exist among these pages.
Crossing over between these two approaches occurs when homicides perpetrated by friends and acquaintances occur.
Family Homicides
Homicides between family members account a large number of violent deaths. In fact, a person has a greater risk of death by homicide in the family than anywhere else, but for the military and police ranks. In Canada, 6 out of 10 victims of family homicide are children.
Mass Murder
We have witnessed mass murder in the USA far too many times in last twenty years. Terrorism by US citizens against US citizens shocked all of us. Then terrorism by foreigners committed against US citizens brought us to a new threat.
Before we knew to expect about 20,000 homicides in the US. Now the the recent mass murder of police officers gives rise to concerns for our own safety. |
Culture
Culture has an influence on homicide without question. In some cultures homicide occurs at a greater rate then in another culture.
When we write of "culture" we think about symbols, language, music, art, dance, religion and more.
Television
Television empowers marketers more than any other medium. Edward R. Marrow's penetrating journalism brought millions of Americans news from around the world, first on radio and then television. As a result cigarette manufacturers gained a vast market.
Lucille Ball's comedy antics would soon replace Marrow's real-world journalism and TV would never serve the public need as before her arrival.
As such Television also serves as an inexpensive baby-sitter for young mothers. As a consequence many of us grow up with marketing agents' messages as part of our ideology, our systems of belief.
The role of television in American homicide shows the power of ideas and images.
As a result of the sensationalist story tellers and the gun's role in the "West." millions of young Americans grew up with an image of the American West. This image unveiled the handgun as part of the American psyche. Homicide took a mere trigger pull as a result.
Women
Domestic violence usually occurs because of the male's aggression against the female. At times this aggressiona leads to homicide either for the woman as victim or the male as victim.
When females become victims of homicide, murder, in a domestic violence setting, it occurs because the male loses control and often acts under the influence of alcohol or drugs or both.
When the female perpetrates the homicide, murder, against the male it occurs often enough because of the female acts in self-defense.
Before 1974 violence against wives in domestic settings were labled "misdemeanors" in most states. Because the police do not make arrests for misdemeanors, women were left at home with an assultive husband. A survey conducted in 1975 showed that about 28% of married couples reported a violent assult between spouses during their relationship.
In 1974 the first battered women's shelter opened. By 1980 the first Family Violence Survey, which preceeded many reforms, reflected the high rate of violence in families.
On the legal scene, police officers responded to family violence as emergencies and made arrests. Judges began to recognize spousal abuse as a defense for against murder charges.
Judges may have noted that when women strike out with lethal force, usually they do so against a family member in self-defense. Males tend to strike out with lethal force against strangers or acquaintances. Males account for 90% of homicides as a result. |
(Students - You are welcome to use this web site as a resource if you show quotation marks where needed. Remember to show appropriate reference links. Do not plagiarize. Example: "Most homicides result from crimes of passion." http://www.crimescenecleanup.com) |
Theories of crime causation use social disorganization, strain/deprivation theory, and southern subculture of violence to explain homicides.
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Columbus brought gun powder to the Americas. Little could he have known how far and deep the consequences of this technology would penetrate human existence.
With the advances in gun-smiting and fire-power, the native population soon lost control over their land. The rifle and the handgun served as tools of conquest unlike any weapons known.
As centuries passed popular culture became a popular market for penny-per-word story tellers. Soon a mystique grew around the "six-gun" because of its power to save or destroy life. Wyatt Europe, Billy the Kid, and all of the other western archetypes associated with the six-gun became the stuff of stories for young and old to enjoy. |
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The Police
When small groups of 3 and 4 police officers become vic times of homicide, how might citizens feel about their own safety? Should we wonder if the mass murder of law enforcement officers grew from some recent form of social environment new to society, or is homicide against law enforcement a historical norm only recently recognized because of mass media?
A recent homicide against four Lakewood, Washington police officers on Sunday, November 29, 2009, died as a result of gunshots fired by a mentally disturbed convict. The killer walked into a coffee shop used by off-duty police officers to complete their papers work, and in cold blood shot the four officers to death.
This incident came after other multiple-homicides against police officers in the US.
We all count on the police to record crimes against victims of crime. We count on the police to do more now than ever before, and we expect our police officers to know more. We should ask, how might we help the police protect us while we do what what we can to protect the police.
We count on the police to protect us against homicide. We often cannot count on the police to protect us from homicide. The police do their best, but the police cannot protect us from our own family members.
If we look to family violence and seek answers to police targeted for mass homicide. We may find useful answers to what now looks like a growing trend of citizen perpetrated, terrorist-like attacks on our police forces. |
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