Domestic violence has been on the rise, but many are puzzled as to why this is happening. Here are some well-known and little-known causes for the trouble. Most of them occur either when someone is doing something immoral, or when someone is placed in an impossible-to-resolve dilemma by others:
In a majority of the domestic violence cases, one or more of the combatants is under the influence of drugs or alcohol. These people are not in full possession of their reasoning powers.
The person is angry at someone or something he or she has no control over. That anger is taken out on family members instead. The principle targets of this anger are the Internal Revenue Service, governments, loan companies, landlords, and bosses. A rise in such incidents occurs each year in April, when taxes are due.
Governments now take more than 34 percent of the average person's income in direct taxes, and almost 3/4 of income in total taxes (including all business taxes included in product prices). It is quite a chore to get by on what is left, especially since another 36 percent of the average person's income pays business taxes passed on in higher prices. That leaves 30 percent to live on. People who made financial decisions before government got so greedy are now really in a bind, because they either have to give up things they have worked long and hard for, or live on a shoestring budget for years.
To protect themselves from the trivial (but embarrassing) acts of protesters, politicians have turned such non-hazardous acts as throwing pies and pelting politicians with rotten fruit into the same felony of battery that was formerly reserved for the act of beating someone up. This swells the "domestic violence" count by including semiviolent acts of protest in the count.
Government policies intended to make people more "equal" and protect the environment have instead caused companies to take their jobs to other countries, leaving U.S. workers without jobs. The loss of a job, and the threat of job loss combine to put undue pressure on employees, especially blue collar workers. Those people tend to take out their frustrations on their families.
A large number of domestic violence incidents occur just before or during an eviction, a mortgage foreclosure, or a tax sale, because people are being penalized for things that aren't their fault. Police are often called on by banks or landlords to remove homeowners and tenants from seized land. "Government at your service!"
It used to be a felony to commit adultery, to have sex outside of marriage, and to entice a married person. Philandering politicians have changed all of that to protect themselves. Since the only legal remedy for adultery today is divorce, many wronged spouses have used violence against both of the adulterers, because there is nothing else they can do. The system rewards the wrongdoer with just what he or she wants.
Thanks to the immorality of certain politicians (and their rewriting of the laws) there now exists no legal protection for a marriage. If one spouse decides to end the marriage, there is not a single legal thing the other spouse can do to prevent the breakup. This kind of breakup is devastating to the spouse who wants to preserve the relationship, especially if divorce is forbidden by his religion. Fear is the only remaining thing available for that spouse to try, because government has destroyed all other remedies. Again, the wrongdoer is rewarded and the innocent person is punished by laws created to help politicians do wrong.
Many schoolteachers are actively trying to undermine the traditional methods of discipline (which they don't believe in). The result is that the child is left with no form of discipline at all, since the method the teachers believe in doesn't work. An uncontrollable child is the result.
Since religion was removed from school, children are no longer trained in moral behavior (except the failed "political correctness"). On the contrary, most children now grow up believing that they are more important than others. Teachers reinforce this belief by punishing one child for hurting the feelings of another, instead of telling the child with hurt feelings that feelings can't really do anything to you. When these children, used to being protected by these substitute authorities, don't get what they want, or are harassed by others, they resort to violence to try to restore the balance they know from school. This is why so many children bring weapons to school.
Recent changes in the law have empowered nonworking spouses and children with the ability to make unreasonable threats. A spouse can threaten to leave, unless given more money to spend. Children can threaten to start a welfare investigation if they don't get the toys they want. Some teenaged gangs teach kids how to blackmail their parents with this. Both are threats intended to make the breadwinner spend money the family can't really afford, with a much larger legal expense being the penalty for not spending the money. This creates anger, because the government again sides with the unjust.
This same scenario has happened over and over again: A credit card company sends a "pre-approved" card to a nonworking family member. Without telling the breadwinner about the card, this family member runs up a huge debt. Some credit card companies have even sent cards to ex-spouses, as though they were still married to the cardholder. It's in the credit card company's "best interest" to do these shady things, because that way they get to collect more interest. Meanwhile, the breadwinner has to work harder and keep less because of the added debt. Again, the system is on the side of the wrongdoer.
Many cases of "domestic violence" turn out to be spankings, which ultra-liberal bystanders report to police as "savage beatings." These cases are usually filed as "domestic violence" by the nature of the complaint, but they should be filed as "false report" due to the resolution of the case. And to make things worse, the government tends to act as though the parent is guilty, until shown otherwise.
The increasing number of apartments, tenements, and condominiums is increasing the number of police complaints about disturbances caused by neighbors. The chief elements are usually noise (or is it music) and odors. Zoning causes similar troubles. The "sardine can effect" of packing many people into small places also contributes to increased violence.
Some prescription drugs can have a side-effect of entirely changing the personality of the person taking them. Some can change warm loving people into cynical grouches. Because of changed preferences, a person changed by this effect gets angry, because family members are treating them "wrong" (by doing the things that used to please that person). The result is usually a broken home.
Many times, a small disturbance that would have ended without any real harm is escalated into major violence by the entrance of police into the matter. In many cases, all participants in the original disturbance have then banded together to battle the unwanted police intrusion. One particular escalation occurs whenever someone barricades himself in a house. For some strange reason, police always decide that that person must be pried out and put away. Many of these cases end up in deaths that would not have happened if the police had just left well enough alone.
Many of these cases occur when a "do gooder" neighbor calls police about a case that is none of his business.
Street gang members get away with the terrorism they commit because victims are afraid to identify them, and because judges won't convict without police eyewitness testimony in many cases. Threats of gang violence are another reason children take weapons to school. Gang hooligans should get the same police attention that a Bin Laden agent gets. The law should be changed so that depositions can be used in court if the witness is killed, and so witness killing has an automatic death penalty.
Many times police activity is not directed toward what would reduce crime the most, but instead it is directed toward what brings in the most revenue for the department. So, in many cases, they make an arrest or write a ticket where none is warranted, just to keep the police department solvent, while real criminal activity is being ignored.
Many governments have turned trivial offenses into domestic violence cases because they can then use the federal laws to prevent those people from ever owning guns. This is a wrongful attempt to remove guns from the hands of the law-abiding public. This is a case of wrongfully enforcing the Political Correctness religion on people who do not believe in it.
Many "domestic violence" cases are not the result of someone "wanting to be violent," but instead are the result of outside pressures overwhelming people. Other cases should never have been counted as domestic violence cases. And when followed back to their sources, most of them have government as at least a contributing factor in the cause of the trouble.