I think the left wing’s push for gun control and the right wings push back against crime and the war on cops is kind of tone deaf.

While the media is highlighting crime and gun violence, the opposite is true in most people’s lives – crime is going down, neighborhoods are the safest they’ve been in half a century. Murders have fallen to historically low levels, indeed much of the reason why suicides have increased in the country is because murder has fallen so much. Murder after all is suicide by other means.

Indeed, if you look at the push by the left to loosen criminal penalties and legalize marijuana, much of it comes from the realization crime has fallen dramatically. Likewise, right wing gun advocates can legitimately say that fears of gun violence are overblown when crime and murder has fallen so much in recent decades.

Television news brings violence into one’s home every night. It shows sad relatives and friends of the dead, it shows the drama of the courtroom as mostly the colored and poor are brought to what the television calls justice. But despite what indigestion television is causing to folks eating TV dinners, and the cheers and jeers of the politician class, it’s distant from the everyday reality folks are living.