Homicide American Routine

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Homicide: A Universal Problem, an American Routine Alfred Hitchcock once said that “everyone enjoys a nice murder… provided he not be the victim” (quotes.net). While he is most likely referencing his movie productions, he brings an unusual point about the American psyche: the American people has become complacent to the disproportionate number of homicides that occur in this country as opposed to other first world countries. Many sociologists have looked at this rampant problem of murder and how comparably unnoticed this problem has become. One sociologist by the name of Dr. Leonard Beeghley has come up with the most concise and complete reason as to why so many Homicides occur in the United States. He proposes that the large homicide rate …show more content…
Americans choose to allow homicide because they do not want to change their lifestyle (Beeghley 168). Instead of lowering the homicide rate, they choose to be restricted to their past, have a high availability of guns, and not take more active steps in curtailing the expansive illegal drug market. America’s history, for starters, restricts the way in they can deal with the homicide problem, but only if Americans accept history simply as what happened in the past. The founding of the American nation is rooted in a deep-seated racism against people of different gender or a different skin tone. This history carries over to a list full of unchecked and government-sponsored homicides and even genocides of peoples such as the Native Americans and African Americans simply because of their skin tone. This unchecked history of violence and aggression against people of color has created an inequality in who suffers from homicides, with African Americans in particular being over five times likely to be murdered in cold blood than their white counterparts, and this is not including the number of friends and family members that also suffer from this injustice (Beeghley …show more content…
Some estimates in Dr. Beeghley’s Book, namely by Erich Goode, who suggests that the United States imports and uses nearly 60% of all the illegal substances found in the world. This massive section of the American Market, as well as the extended efforts by the American government to curtail this market (Beeghley 183), creates a dangerously competitive environment that results in a high rate of homicide as a means of getting rid of one’s competitors. Beeghley suggests a number of ways to curtail this growing market, including the radical (or at least partial) legalization and subsequent regulation of illegal drugs, increased standardized education in schools on the dangers of drug use, and the reduction of prison sentencing and/or severity of such a sentencing. These efforts may result in a less volatile drug market, which in turn creates a lower homicide