Humans and Violence

Human beings are violent by nature, a result of evolutionary chance. We share that characteristic with chimpanzees because we have a common violent ancestor. Chimps and humans split from that ancestor 5 million years ago.

It’s been said that humans and chimpanzees are the only species that kill their own, but that statement is only partially true. Many species may kill their own for a variety of reasons, including survival, procreative advantage, or rivalry. But none kill as ferociously as chimps and humans.

Male chimps patrol the borders of their territory. If they encounter an isolated male from another community, they may attack and kill him. They also engage in territorial raids using a typical pattern that includes a silent coordinated patrol, searching for a numerical advantage, a sudden overwhelming attack, and repeated attacks over time against the same group.

Chimp aggression also happens inside a community, where there can be dominance fights between males, attacks on lower-ranking members, occasional infanticide, and coercive aggression related to mating.

Humans raise the ante on Chimp behavior. They engage in organized coalition violence, which includes planning and coordination, warfare-like behavior between groups, and killing on scales far beyond immediate survival needs. The developed human brain has transformed human violence through tools and weapons, ideology and politics, large-scale cooperation, and abstraction (“nation,” “religion,” “class,” etc.).

Like all behaviors that come under scrutiny these days, attitudes towards violence are subject to one’s political ideology – left versus right. Each tribe is attached to views on violence that align with its political beliefs.

On the political left, violence is viewed through a structural lens, framed as something embedded in systems (poverty, racism, inequality). Reducing those conditions is seen as key to reducing violence overall. The left prefers nonviolent protest. Traditions influenced by figures like Martin Luther King Jr. emphasize civil disobedience and mass protest. The left is skeptical of state force and is more concerned about police brutality, mass incarceration, and military interventions. Some fringe or historical movements on the left have justified revolutionary violence, but that’s not the dominant modern mainstream position.

On the right, the emphasis is on order and deterrence. Violence is often viewed through the lens of maintaining order and discouraging crime (strong policing, harsher penalties). The right believes in the legitimacy of force for protection, greater acceptance of self-defense rights (including firearm ownership), and the use of force to protect property or the nation.

The right is more supportive of military strength and more likely to support robust defense and, in some cases, preemptive or assertive use of military force. The exception on the right is the libertarian and religious conservative strands that stress restraint, non-aggression, and just-war limits.

The tribes do have overlapping beliefs. A vast majority of Americans condemn violence by individuals (crime, terrorism). Both sides generally accept some legitimate use of force (e.g., self-defense, policing, national defense), but disagree on scope, oversight, and thresholds.

There is a strong break generating different positions on what counts as “violence” and direct physical harm vs. broader societal “structural” harms. The tribes have different levels of trust in institutions, especially the police, courts, and the military. The debate over dealing with violence gets more complicated when it comes to risk trade-offs, such as civil liberties vs. security or prevention vs. punishment. Historical experience and group identity shape perceptions of threat and protection.

One large population study found that about 3.9% of people had at least one conviction for a violent crime. It also found that roughly 1% of the population accounted for over 60% of violent crime convictions.

In the U.S., annual violent crime rates are also relatively low compared to the total population. FBI data typically show around 350–400 violent crimes per 100,000 people per year (about 0.35–0.4% annually), that’s crimes, not unique offenders.

It makes sense to conclude that there is a small percentage of people who commit violent crimes by nature, and it’s unlikely that these crimes can be prevented.

Many can be rehabilitated, though the success rate varies a lot depending on the person, the type of violence, age, mental health, substance abuse, social environment, and whether treatment is intensive and sustained. Research shows that most violent offenders do not remain highly violent for life. Violent behavior tends to peak in the late teens and 20s and decline with age (“aging out” of crime).

Some offenders respond especially well to comprehensive treatment: younger offenders, people whose violence was impulsive rather than predatory, people tied to drugs, alcohol, trauma, or unstable environments, and people with strong family/community support. Others are much harder to rehabilitate, including chronic repeat offenders, highly psychopathic individuals, organized/sadistic offenders, and people with entrenched antisocial personality traits.

One of the strongest findings in criminology is that certainty of structure and opportunity matters more than harshness alone. Countries and systems focused on reintegration often achieve lower repeat-offense rates than those focused solely on punishment.

In the U.S., recidivism (repeat crimes) rates are generally higher, partly because former inmates often return to unstable environments with poor employment prospects and fragmented support.

There’s also an important distinction that needs to be mentioned. Reducing future violence is often achievable; completely changing personality or eliminating all aggressive tendencies may not be. The evidence suggests that many violent offenders can become nonviolent members of society, some improve partially, and a smaller core group remains persistently dangerous despite intervention. This evidence supports government programs that address offenders driven by innate psychological factors.

Even though we can understand the causes of violent crime and the behaviors that lead to it, little is being done because of the close-mindedness of America’s political tribes. Each side holds tight to its ideology and won’t compromise. The left believes that most guns should be banned because they cause violence. The right believes in gun ownership as a right, so any law that curtails that right is inappropriate.

Those are the official ideological positions, but public opinion is more nuanced. A majority of Americans generally support stricter gun laws, though not overwhelmingly. Recent Gallup polling found that about 56% favor stricter laws, while roughly a third want laws kept as they are, and a small minority want them loosened.

The devil is in the details, however. Keeping guns away from the mentally ill and implementing a tight process for buying and owning guns are very logical approaches that should deter some crime. Still, the gun lobby will have no part of what they see as the restriction of an inherent right.

Human violence will never end because it’s built into human nature. Like any societal issue, if the problem of violence in America is not addressed, the public suffers for it. If tribalism does not end, American democracy cannot survive.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.