healey, a social yol sociologist from duke university. they show deaths from assault in 23 develops nations not including our own. that line way up there, above all others, that line shows deaths from assault in the u.s. we re an extremely violent country, it s true, but look at this. we re not nearly so violent as we used to be. our assault rate peaked in the late 1970s, and awful events like aurora notwithstanding have been falling continuously ever since. within america, the south is by far the most violent region. it has the most deaths from assault. then comes the wests where the shootings happens followed by the midwest and northeast. thanks again to karen for this chart. also, gun ownership is on the decline. the percentage of american households that say they own a pistol or a shotgun is about half what it was 40 years ago, according to the general social survey. and the most recent numbers from gallup which aren t on the graph
you cannot politicize a tragedy because a tragedy is already political. when you talk about the tragedy, you re already talking about politics. but for all that, we must be careful when a specific tragedy or event leads to a broad national conversation. the thing about a horror like aurora, the reason the whole country is talking about it and grieving over it, is that it is unusual. it is rare. and as such, it is dangerous to generalize from it. so tonight on the rachel maddow show, we re going to try to step back a moment. it will be some time before we truly understand what happened in colorado last week, if we ever do, but it is possible to understand broader facts about guns, about gun violence, and about gun control in the united states of america. and one thing we can say for sure, to begin, is that america is an unusually violent country. this chart comes from kjeron healey, a social yol sociologist from duke university. they show deaths from assault in 23 develops nations n