>Only a tiny minority of people living in the U.S. will commit violent crimes over the course of their lives And this is a result of the society we live in (we

>Only a tiny minority of people living in the U.S. will commit violent crimes over the course of their lives And this is a result of the society we live in (welfare state, etc), not a fundamental property of us as a people. Take all those things away and you will see a very large increase in violent crime. My point is that the difference between those who commit crimes now and those that don't is simply a matter of degrees. Nothing you've said contradicts that. Of course people are responsible for their own actions; what people are not are analytical machines that consider all possible scenarios independent of emotions and drives. It is the drives and emotions that strongly bias our internal scoring system for various decisions. So in this sense we are prone to acting irrational when it is in our best interest (from the perspective of our primitive brain). Society is constructed to allow us to provide for our basic needs so that we can suppress our basic instincts and make the best rational decisions collectively. Democracy does not crumble in the face of partially irrational actors.