Once again, the statistics on how many people are killed in ‘War’ is heavily biased by how the figures are collected, and how the collectors define ‘War’. Is a gang war any less of a war, it participants less violent, just because their cause is not a national one? We count civil war in the figures, even though one side is not a government, but rarely count gang wars.

I’m hoping to see a time where death by violence decreases.

A time when the individuals themselves seek to settle differences through reason and peaceful means, rather than with guns, knives, machetes, baseball bats, etc. That will be a significant change.

The fact that official wars, Government led violence, is on the decline actually worries me. It feels rather like the calm before the storm. It feels like that short time of confidence that ‘The Great War’ was ‘The War to End All Wars’. It feels as though they are looking at the buildup of men and armour on the borders of Russia, and the global rise in Fascism and Racism, and saying “Hold the troops a while, we need to prepare them for the big one coming.”

I’d very much like to know if this sort of lull also happened shortly before the First World War. Any stats on that?