The Global Cost of Domestic Violence

War Is a Long, Messy Hell And it’s more important than ever that we try to prevent it in the first place.

By Bjørn Lomborg Posted Wednesday, May 9, 2012, at 3:10 PM ET

Without peace and stability, there are impediments to solving every other challenge that we have looked at in the Copenhagen Consensus 2012 series. Armed conflict is a major global problem that disproportionately affects the world’s poorest. Not a single low-income country afflicted by violence has achieved even one of the eight Millennium Development goals. 

What is the biggest source of violence in our world? With the brutal conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere constantly in the news, many people would probably say war. But that turns out to be spectacularly wrong.

Mass shootings such as last week’s in Florida have prompted law enforcement and the media to look for patterns, and here’s one that has emerged: A disturbing number of perpetrators have previously been accused of domestic abuse. Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control-advocacy group, analyzed FBI data on mass shootings from 2009 to 2016 and found that in 54 percent of cases, the victims included the shooter’s current or former spouse or intimate partner, or another family member — and 16 percent of attackers between 2009 and 2015 had previously been charged with domestic violence.