A Distressing Statistic

In the Op-Ed section of the New York Times today Bob Herbert had an article with the title, "100,000 gone since 2001." Since 9/11/01 over 100,000 people have been murdered in the United States.

That figure takes your breath away. According to the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, Chuck Wexler, each year approximately 100,000 cases of aggravated assault with a firearm are reported. While in some cases the gunman misses, the number of those who are actually shot is 60,000. The number of robberies committed by juveniles increasingly show little regard for their victims' lives. Rat-packing, the use of cellphones to by robbers to reach other assailants for the purpose of surrounding the victim, has emerged as a new strategy.

Herbert wants the federal government to become more involved in addressing this surge in violent crime, something that makes sense to me. The causes for this problem, it seems to me, are multiple and complex, but surely one of the primary causes is the breakdown of the family and the problem of fatherlessness in so many families. He doesn't mention this, perhaps because in our current cultural confusion about marriage and parenting, it would be politically incorrect to point out family breakdown as a prime suspect in the problem.