Social media and widespread availability of lethal weapons make this era more dangerous than the 1960s – and the violence may increase
Charlie Kirk’s killing came amid a rise in political violence in the US, the kind now so frequent that it moves swiftly out of news cycles it would once have dominated.
The list is long and growing. From the two assassination attempts on Donald Trump during his campaign last year to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home burnt in an arson attack in April and the Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband gunned down by a man dressed as a police officer in June, to name a few.
In the first six months of 2025, more than 520 plots and acts of terrorism and targeted violence occurred, affecting nearly all US states and causing 96 deaths and 329 injuries. This is a nearly 40% increase over the first six months of 2024, according to data from the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.
Mass casualty attacks, where four or more victims were killed or wounded, increased by 187.5% in the first six months of 2025 compared with the same period last year. Michael Jensen, the research director at START, wrote on LinkedIn in late August that “the warning signs of growing civil unrest in the US are evident” in the group’s data.
