A recent report from the Senate Judiciary Committee claims that the murder rate in the U.S. and New Mexico will rise during the next year – in New Mexico by 15 percent. Since the early 1960s violent crimes has been on the rise and shows no sign of slowing down. Such dramatic increases in violent criminal activity have been attributed to the increase in drug production and trafficking. Can that be true? While it may be a factor it cannot be the primary cause. Drug use is actually declining in the U.S. because of the most rent national push against it.

What causes people to solve their conflicts with deadly force?

In 1990 a report by the Justice Department outlined trends in crime from the previous year. Some types of crime were up and some were down. What the Justice Department did not emphasize in its report was thing this writer noticed tucked away in its data.

Crimes for “things” decreased. Crimes to “hurt others” increased. Crimes with no purpose but to physically harm others increased by 10 percent. Crimes involving theft to acquire something belonging to someone else, or cause damage to things, decreased: Property crime went down by one percent. Burglary decreased by four percent. Larceny stayed level.

It would seem that our more violent emotions are getting out of control. However, anger is not a factor in many violent crimes. Drive-by shootings, gang warfare, shooting sprees and the like don’t have personal vengeance as their core motivation. What used to be a crime of passion has become a crime of fashion – killing for fun.

Congressional liberals have cited the most recent report to support their position on gun control. By reversing the Second Amendment right to bear arms and making powerful firearms hard to acquire they think violent crimes will decrease. It is a false assumption. The same report from the FBI says only one percent of all homicides are committed with semiautomatic weapons. What many citizens are not aware of is that many ordinary pistols are legally classified as semiautomatic weapons. Passage of such restrictive legislation would restrict a lot more than just big guns that can blow bullets through walls.

If the possession of firearms is the cause or motivating force behind more violent crimes like murder, then why hasn’t less violent crime also increased? Since guns make murder easy, wouldn’t they also make other crimes easier, thus contributing to an increase of equal, if not larger proportion than violent crimes?

Clearly that is not the case.

For hundreds of years Americans have been carrying guns. But people didn’t begin shooting each other like a carnival game until the last 30 years. Guns really aren’t problem.

Jesus Christ defined our problems in terms of what we think. If we lust, we commit adultery in the heart. If we look at one another with hatred and anger, we murder in the heart. If we covet we are thieves at heart. The only thing that keeps us from committing the acts buried deep within our hearts is the ability to control ourselves. To bridle our passions with a knowledge of right and wrong and the desire to do right for the sake of right is part of the answer to rising crime.

When television makes revenge look cool, when education refuses to address behaviors as morally right or wrong, when popular music reflects rebellion, when parents abdicate their children’s minds to the present techno/liberation culture, then a rise in violent crime is to be expected.

As a nation we are coming to a violent crossroads. We sympathize if a poor man steals for food. We chastise the man who steals for a living. We revile the person who murders in a passionate moment. But these kinds of crimes are decreasing. Crimes for the sake of committing the crime – crimes for fun, for the fun of killing and the fun of hurting, these are the crimes on the increase. We could not only care less about whether something is right or wrong, the wrongness of certain things is becoming irrelevant. So it’s wrong, so what? Let’s do it anyway.

To solve our crime problem we need a dramatic return to the values that Jesus taught – a dramatic return as dramatic as our rate of murder.