Violent crime during the Depression seems to have been concentrated of a popular individuals at that time. Bonnie and Clyde, Bugsy Malone, John Dillinger, Baby faced Nelson, Ma Barker and those types were criminal murderers fighting a Robin Hood type battle. They were popularized as fighting the Banks, the Government (G-Men), the “system”.
As far as I can recollect, they did not just beat up a citizen standing at a bus stop. They did kill Law Enforcement officers, bank personnel, G-men and a few innocent bystanders but their main target was not a random individual standing at a street corner. They stole money and if someone stepped out of line, they killed them in cold blood but that is not what we are seeing today.
Today, due to many reasons, life is cheaper and it is “cool” to be armed like an action figure to just go out and kill for the heck of it.
I believe that it is the culmination of evaporated family values, loss of religion, the Protestant Hard work ethic, and lots of Hollywood movies where, for the last 40 years every good looking gal & guy has his/her hands clenched around a pistol with their arms extended outwards as they kick in a door.
I come from an NRA family and I can tell you that the glorification of blam, blam, blam has tipped the population’s mental state to the point where shooting a firearm is a rite of passage for many folks. There is so much more gore in films and TV than at any other time.
All those shows about solving what? Murders and forensic sciences. It’s all about violent crime and that is our entertainment today. It’s no wonder that people keep shooting people in a random way.
We execute far fewer people than we used to. Back in the day, when our population was 1/2 what it is, we executed 4x as many people. We also executed them within 3 years of the trial. Executions were not only carried out, they were carried out while the crimes for which punishment was being levied were fresh in the public's mind. Asian movies are far more violent that ours, and Asian crime rates are far lower.
The erosion of the WASP ethic (work, family) is the #1 factor as far as I’m concerned; it was deliberately destroyed by those who felt marginalized or threatened by it, and it is most obviously absent in the urban toilets. The WASPs themselves failed to convey it to following generations, to the point where the mainline Protestant churches have become twisted fantasies the don’t resemble Christianity as preached by Jesus at all (with permissive attitudes towards divorce, abortion, homosexuality). Fundamentalists and evangelicals still champion true Christian values, and the Catholic Church officially never strayed from them (while the message has been watered down by those in the hierarchy who have lost their faith), but these groups have been marginalized themselves to a point where they no longer play much of a role on the national level.
