The Council on Criminal Justice’s Mid-Year 2025 analysis (42 consistently reporting U.S. cities) found that 11 of 13 types of offenses decreased year over year. Highlights: homicide −17% (327 fewer deaths), gun assault −21%, robbery −20%, carjacking −24%, residential burglary −19%, nonresidential burglary −18%, larceny −12%. There were two exceptions: domestic violence  went up by 3% and drug offenses remained largely unchanged. However, compared with the same period in 2024, the first 6 months of 2025 saw an increase of nearly 40% in acts of terrorism and targeted violence (according to research and data from the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland), and mass casualty incidents, where four or more victims were killed or wounded, increased by 187.5% in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period last year. Where ordinary, everyday violence – apart from intimate partner violence – has been consistently falling, it appears that “extreme” violence is on the rise.

               When considering statistics, especially when there are dramatic rises and falls, such as increases of 40% and nearly 200%, it can be easy to fall into the belief that we are entering a post-apocalyptic era, where we should make sure our bugout bag is near at hand, sleep with a loaded weapon next to us, and make sure we have enough tinned goods and fresh water to last us the next 6 months etc. Acts/incidents of extreme violence are still statistically rare, and it doesn’t always take a huge number of extra incidents to cause something like a 40% rise. So, whilst such increases are significant and can be troubling, they don’t necessarily signal that we’re entering a Mad Max-type era (for those who didn’t grow up during the seventies and eighties, a more modern/relevant reference would be the 2024 film, “Furiosa”, which continued the franchise). A 2024 PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) poll showed that whilst 70% of Americans believed that the country, as a whole, was heading in the “wrong direction” at the community level 56% believed that things were heading in the right direction i.e., there was an understanding about violence at a national level (“extreme” violence), that wasn’t reflected at the local/personal level (“everyday” violence) etc.

However, what such statistics may signal is a change in the public’s perception concerning when violence is justified. The same PRRI survey also showed that nearly 3 in 10 Republicans (29%), 16% of independents, and 8% of Democrats agreed with the statement that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.” It is important to note that these are “opinions” and the idea of what “saving” the country means doesn’t represent one universal idea and can be interpreted in vastly different ways. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist (Mar 25–28, 2024 poll released on Apr 3) showed that 20% (1 in 5) of U.S. adults agree “Americans may have to resort to violence to get the country back on track”.

One of the issues with justifying the use of violence beyond that of self-defense is that it opens up the use of physical force outside of legal constraints, and this can be a slippery slope for everyone in society e.g., if an individual doesn’t like someone else’s views/opinions or deems them detrimental to their view of society, are they entitled to use violence, in order to eradicate anything that challenges their belief system, and is this restricted to political beliefs, or can it extend to anything an individual believes is unjust or unfair etc. I have found in my time teaching self-defense, use of force etc., that people tend to believe that the law innately reflects their views, beliefs and what they see as fair. I remember working through an active shooter scenario, that saw the shooter restrained/incapacitated, and no longer able to access their weapons. Someone in the seminar then asked, “Is this when we shoot them?” Even though I explained that they no longer had the means to commit violence, and that nobody was any longer in imminent danger etc. - which didn’t justify the use of lethal force in that moment - these points were met with a degree of disbelief with the argument being made, “But he tried to kill me?” as if the law justified personal retribution. Whilst I understood the argument from an emotional perspective – someone has just tried to kill you and that’s not right or fair – the law concerning rights of self-defense have to stand, otherwise society is on a very slippery slope, with everyone acting how they feel they as individuals should be allowed to – with impunity.

Whilst most students reject violence, a sizeable minority say it can be justified in limited cases (and that share has grown in recent years). In FIRE’s latest nationwide survey (≈70k college students, 257 schools), 34% say it’s at least rarely acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech (2% “always,” 13% “sometimes,” 19% “rarely”); whilst 66% say “never” this is still a record high in their six-year series. There is a danger when those who are “educated” start to believe that violence can be justified – even if rarely - to stop/prevent ideas, however hateful those ideas might be to them (the strength of a good education is to be able to engage in discourse and argument). There will be those who take these ideas and apply them in a politically partisan way, but it is much more beneficial to recognize that societally we are in danger of justifying the use of violence in the name of “noble” ideas rather than for the goal of physically defending ourselves, and this is a slippery slope to set foot on, and one which could see us as individuals cross a line that we weren’t legally entitled to cross over – regardless of how legally/morally justified we felt ourselves to be in doing so.