When youre talking about violence done primarily with knives or swords or muzzleloading firearms, it takes quite a while to reload, even if youre a skilled person, it take 30s seconds to reload one of those things and by the time you pour in the powder, stamp down the wad, tamp down the shot, put on the percussion cap and get ready, the person youre trying to kill should be a half mile away. Its very difficult. So these were really mass murders where a lot of people got together to do these things. We have examples early in our history. Talk about the pequot war, they had surrendered, they were hiding out in a swamp, the remnants of them, 700 women, children and men. The others surrounded the swamp and burned it down and if people tried to escape they shot the people. It took a lot of people to kill 700 people back then. You take a look at things like the when the mormons, fearing inroads of gentiles into their territory and feeling the hostility of the gentile, remembering that there are mass murders of mormons by gentiles in missouri, essentially killed an entire wagon train of nonmormon settlers coming through. You see these kinds of things. The draft riots of 1863. In new york city. The thing is, these kinds of things really you had to get a group together, this is true of insurgent things too, when you look at nat turners rebellion in 1831 or say john browns attempt at insurgency at harpers ferry, which was intended to be a mass murder of a number of slave owners and their sympathizers. And the thing is, when you look back at those, too, something id like to add about those is every time weve looked at them, we see that many of them are led by the most respected, prominent people in the community. These were not things that were done idly or spontaneously. Spontaneously as we once thought. Very rare to have something happen spontaneously. They were organized by political elites, military elite, spiritual elites. Even when you have something thats an insurgency like gnat turners like nat turners, hes the most respected clergyman in that area. John brown was not an unknown quantity in the abolition movement, he was admired and respected though they knew he was a violent man for his actives any trying to defend kansas. We see this going on into reconstruction too. You dont see modern firearms as we know them today, even in the 1870s, most people dont have a modern firearm. Youll see mass murders going on during reconstruction. Usually theyre led by former confederate soldier, former con federal confederate elites. Bill do you think those levels of mob violence were unique to the United States . Randolph absolutely not. As a matter of fact, we see that, when i gave my talk to the Historical Society yesterday about this, i said, you know, every one of us, regardless of our field, knows that through most of human history, mass murder has been a group activity. Its not something a lone individual could do. And so whats really different today is not that groupled Mass Violence is gone from the world. We can see it in all kinds of genocidal activities around the world. Brutal kinds of displays. But what we do see now in the United States and much of the world is a single individual or small group of individuals who have the capacity to kill a large number of people in a very short time and this depends very much on technology. You need to be able to concentrate. Bill and were talking the day after a shooter at Fort Lauderdale airport has killed numbers of people, at least they believe a single gunman. Randolph thats right. What youll see, its not just semiautomatic weapon, though they play a role. You can see, you can do it with an airplane. We can see, we can do it with fertilizer. You can do it with a truck. Anything, these are all modern inventions, arent they . So whenever you have these modern inventions that have been used for such group purposes, generally speaking, the airplane has been a wonderful invention for humanity in many way bus they have a dark side. Whenever you concentrate, like we know with accident, wherever you can concentrate energy and build something more powerful with more mass and velocity, the chances of having an accident, deadly accident, increase. And thats the same thing were look at here. The chance for using this to deliberately kill somebody is out there. Bill it seems like in modern times, after many of these incidents, an outcry of outrage but also changes in, whether its firearm law or changes in immigration or whatever, in historical terms, after, say, some of the incidents youve mentioned, was there public outcry over these . Randolph theres definitely public outcry. When you take a look at the mass murders happening in reconstruction, Congress Passed the ku klux klan act. 1870 and 1871. And president grant was forcefully behind them. He was angry with what happened. He was very much a person who wanted to build a different america. And he knew the confederates were resisting this. So he really forcefully sent down the federal army. We know now that he was more forceful in his Immediate Response and in those couple of years, he really did a great deal with that federal presence and certainly the confederacy was terrified of president grant for good reasons. He had a reputation and they knew he meant business. So for a while there, while they were actively trying to use the union army to suppress these groups, they were fairly successful in the short run but gave up, essentially. Congress gave up, moved on to other things, the election of 1872, when the dynamics of politics changed and the north started to withdraw, you know, it just came back. When we look at other kinds of, another incident i like to talk about, we had a great deal of anarchist violence. Bill over what sort of issues . Randolph over what sort of issues, the anarchists were against all kinds of government but they were talk targeting particular people. They tried to blow up wall street, as you know. They tried to assassinate attorney general mitchell palmer. They were using dynamite in particular. To try to assassinate public officials. We know that organized crime was using dynamite and other kinds of explosive devices. And they were using thompson automatic machine guns, submachine guns. They were using silencers to sneak up on people and kill them. It was not a mass murder, it was a sequential mass murder. Were going to liquidate this other group and do it one at a time. With a silencer, you can go up behind somebody, shoot them and disappear. What congress did in 1934 was pass the National Firearms act. It did not confiscate anybodys firearm. It didnt confiscate anybodys dynamite. What congress did is it said ok, were going to make this more expensive. Were going to tax this heavily. Were not going to let this be a cheap thing you can do. Buy dynamite, by a buy a silencer or buy a fully automatic weapon. If youre going to possess those in the future, going to purchase one you need a license. Even if youre buying it from somebody who already owns it, you need a license. So we live in a society, can people get access to dynamite . Absolutely. But they have to be in con instruction, have to have a license, have to pay a tax. If they want to have a silencer, they can. Collectors can have fully automatic weapons. But you have to a good reason, you have to pay a tax, this is expensive. What is the implication of that . When you think about it, how many of us were killed with a silencer last year . How many were killed by dynamite . How many were killed with a fully automatic weapon . The thing is, it didnt take them out of circulation where they were there, but over 60 years, those things become collectors item they become Museum Pieces and gradually they come out, theyre not a weapon of choice. What i would say to amplify on this, if we come to the present, when plays were used, what did we do . We reinforced the cockpit doors. The United States very foresightedly said, you must have two people in the cockpit. Now theyre going to have two. When we had a fertilizer bomb by somebody who wasnt a farmer, now you have to be a farmer to buy five tons of fertilizers. Otherwise so what weve done, always weve responded, weve seen new technologies being used for nefarious purposes, weve tried to make it so that people who have a legitimate reason to use these technologies have full access to them and people who dont have legitimate reasons to have access to these technologies cant have it. Bill youre pointing out throughout history, laws are put in place, people circumvent and find other ways to commit mob violence. Randolph sure, right now what we are doing is working with rental truck agencies, the f. B. I. , theyre working with all trucking firms, any time as immediately when a truck goes missing now, the f. B. I. Wants to know. Immediately when someone suspicious wants to get a truck, the f. B. I. Wants to know. And so youre going to have the same kind of network of information that we now have with the sales of fertilizers. And again, people will always find new ways. No question. Theres always a dynamic between Law Enforcement and criminal behavior. It goes back, theres a wonderful book about philadelphia policing. Every time Philadelphia Police figure out how to stop burglars or bank robbers, five years later, criminals are smart, they figure out another way and then they come up with a new strategy and it goes on and on and on through human history. Bill you touched on some of these. What are some of the societal factors that you see that influence the rise and fall of Mass Violence . Randolph when you look at Mass Violence over the long term, from the 17th century down into the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, what youll see is that a lot of it has to do with people feeling toward government and society. It has to do with do we have a stable political system . Do we have a stable state . And youll see theres a lot of Mass Violence on contested frontiers. Theres a lot of Mass Violence in revolutions, in civil wars, during hostile military occupations. What we see is its not just the Mass Violence that goes up in these periods. It turns out it correlates perfectly with individual violence among unrelated people. So youre going to see more deadly property feuds. More deadly robbery murders. Sexual assault murders, feud murders, honor murders. Ive mapped this out. If you look at the deaths in Mass Violence or political protest and you map it out against the murder rate, everyday murders, that go up and down in sequence and so also we think it has to do really until recently, it maps out over 150 450 years, the degree to which they feel empowered by their government do i feel this is legitimate government . Am i included . You can see periods of intense british patriotism or american patriotism in the early american period. What youll find is that so many people believed in our government, believed in their kinship with other americans and we had political stability. We had widespread selfemployment. Africanamericans were being freed in the north and even though we see tremendous discrimination, theyre doing better. We see the homicide rate was probably the lowest in the western world in those areas. And what you see is that there are riots, but theyre not deadly. Americans have been protesting and rioting a long time. But its whether we kill people, thats the issue. So what you can see is when we divided politically in the mexican war, thats when the murder rate goes up. Thats when Mass Violence goes up. And yes, it looks like its about labor issues. It looks like its about religion like the mormon massacre or the killings of catholics in louisville. These kinds of things happen. It looks all piecemeal. But when youre a historian and you look at it comparatively across time and space, you can see that these huge patterns really build up. And so people arent aware that the reason, the big reason out here is really about our feelings toward government and our society. Bill tracking these trends, what about the scope of Domestic Violence . That seems a more recent issue that weve been able to at least qualify, quantify, issues like spousal abuse, rape, certainly murder between men and women. Randolph Domestic Violence follows a very different pattern from the kind of Mass Violence were talking about. Bill why . Randolph well, its a very different relationship and it has to do not with general feelings about the society and government. It has to do with really the way, you know, gender roles are played out. Has to do with the balance of power between men and women. What youll see in the colonial period, theres great deal of Domestic Violence. If you look in the court records, people are being battered, beaten and for every four cases, i think, of a husband beating a wife youll see a case abusing a husband and youll see another case of mutual combat. Whats interesting is that it almost always stops before killing. And when you see these tight partnerships, the shops and farms that we had, its so much dependent on that partnership. So if you were upset or angry with your spouse you beat them to try to get them to come around to what you want or express your anger. But youd stop short of killing them. And most of the fatal injuries we see are manslaughters. In other words, i meant to beat you, but i didnt mean to kill you. They suddenly realize, youre not getting awake. That youre terribly injured they go for medical help. Youre supposed to plow the field tomorrow. Youre supposed to make breakfast tomorrow, i didnt mean to kill you, i meant to brutalize you. And so you see this. What happens in the 1830s and 1840s, and i think what happens in the 1960s and 1970s again is when you see a shift in the balance of power toward women, were not talking about equality, we dont live in the Promised Land of gender equality, we dont know what a gender equal society would look like. But as we move toward this, every time we move toward it, i think what weve seen is the typical relationship gets healthier. The typical relationship becomes less violent in a physical way. But the minority of men who cant make that change or wont make that change become more violent. So youll see a surge in lethal violence. So in the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, against romantic partners and against spouses, youll see that again burgeoning in the 1960s and 1970s. It can be misleading because it looks like things are getting worse. But in fact, the general relationship we think was probably getting better. So and its like any, its tragic. When we look at revolutions, in the shortterm the American Revolution raised the murder rate. In the shortterm, the civil war, which did a good thing to abolish slivery, raised the murder rate. I think the sad thing is gender revolutions, when we make progress toward female empowerment, equality, employment, and asking men to meet a higher emotional stan card, a higher behavioral standard in marriage and in relationships, we see in the short term more violence. Its not the kind of value we see in revolution. It looks like random violence but in fact it is really conditioned, i believe, by these major shifts in relationships. But those dont map on with the other ones were talking about. Because this increase in homicide, which wasnt, its not huge you know. This is still a rarer event than everyday homicides among men. But the male homicides, its the revolution. Its the sexual crisis. This is the 1830s and 1840s. They happen to coincide in the 1960s and 1970s with political upheaval meshed with gender changes. So you get the sense theyre happening at the same time. But if you look at a lot of different places, a lot of different times, theres dynamics in gender relationship is somewhat independent of other things. Bill final couple of thoughts, youre the author of the book american homicide, whats that about and how did you get into this field in general . Randolph its an interregional, longterm study of, internationally comparative study of homicides among adults from colonial times to present. So i deal with Domestic Violence. I deal with Mass Violence. I deal with individual bar fights. Everything like that. And how they played out over time. My companion volume which im working on now is child murder in america, which is murders of or by children through the age of 15 which follows the domestic murder of children, they follow a different pattern strog do with the circumstances of young parents. But the pattern of nondomestic murders of children follows the nondomestic patterns among adults. And i got into it for specific reasons, i dont think violence is a very nice thing. I understand that sometimes violence has been necessary. It seems to me, im not a pacifist, i guess, im a very, i see times in which you have to stand up and fight. But really, most violence that you see is just dysfunctional. It is counterproductive. If its supposedly for a cause. Its something i wanted to get rid of. The original book was going to be about committing murders, but i found out that by the 1960s, they were more violent than sople in manchester england, thats how it grew from a small study of how some americans avoid violence into a broader story of the ups and downs of violence in america and how we can get back to where we were in the early republic when we believed in our country, had a sense of solidarity, believed in the justice of the social hierarchy and had progress toward equality. I think those are the things, when you set up the democracy and dont realize that democracy in a real, genuine way you create violence. Bill randolph roth, history professor at ohio state university. Thanks for being with us. Randolph thank you very much. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up, president trumps the puerto rico today. Andwere live in virginia the cspan bus 50 capitals to her. We will talk about the issues facing west virginia, including the economy and opioid crisis. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal live Tuesday Morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern time. Join me discussion. Join the discussion. Coming up, former equifax chair testifies about the hacking that exposed the information of 145 million consumers. Mr. Smith appears before the house energy committee, whats that on cspan3. Wednesday, mr. Smiths testimony before the senate and king banking committee. You can follow live coverage of both hearings at cspan. Org or on our free cspan radio app. Cspan bus is challenged across the country on our 50 capitals to earth this in and issued that a lot of us and maryland are concerned with is our heritage, the heritage of slavery, and the heritage of the civil war. Statue that was taken down in front of the statehouse. How do we have conversations about our past . Johns, we read frederick douglas, we read the dred scott discussion decision. We have conversations about issues and points of views. Ist i care about most deeply how can we as men how can we as americans and maryland, find on issues that matter to our history and heritage and what is happening today. Im hoping for, not just fighting, not just arguing, not just power struggle, but conversations and building real community. I believe a major issue and when people come out of prison walls, employment and housing, and the support system is very vital to people staying out of prison. Formally who are incarcerated get employment, it is something essential to their families, it is going to keep them and the state safe. On the president of st. Johns college. The issue that is most critical for us to a dress is the issue of civil discourse. At st. Johns college, we offer young people the opportunity to sit at a table and discuss an hour seminars the most important , what Human Flourishing is, what it takes to have a flourishing society. The opportunity to sit around the table and look each other in the eyes, and humanity,e anothers and begin our conversation about important things, we would be a stronger nation, a better society, and we would come closer to finding solutions for the problems that we face. I encourage everybody to think about that model of civil twose, to unjust address one another as human beings. My job and responsibility is to be busted in supervisor and teach people about the art, and get them involved in the workshops. It is important for somebody to understand art, because you understand history and liturgy and culture of the art you are looking at. Important so is you can understand yourself and what you want to go in the future. Next, a look at Public Attitudes on Foreign Policy and the trump administration. It was conducted by the Chicago Council on cultural affairs. Chicago council on Global Affairs hosted this hourlong event