Monopoly of Power

I can think of six highly violent incidences that occurred on U.S. soil in my lifetime. It's hard to forget any of these, not just because of how violent and out-of-the-ordinary each one was, but because of the immense television coverage surrounding each.

In chronological order (with related wikipedia links):

1. Ruby Ridge, 1992: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge

2. WTC bombing, Feb. 26th 1993: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTC_bombing

3. Waco, TX Feb. 28th, 1993: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege

4. OKC bombing, 1995: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKC_bombing
(and the subsequent lethal injection of Timothy McVeigh: http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Execution_of_Timothy_McVeigh)

5. North Hollywood Shootout, 1997: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

And of course:

6. Sept. 11th, 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

That's a nine year span of extremely violent attacks/confrontations on U.S. soil. Excluding the 9/11 attacks, of course, I wonder if that's a fairly "normal" amount of domestic violence. Like, for instance, what were the nine years like from 1983-1992? I cant think of the U.S. invasions of Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989), the TWA hijacking of flight 847 (1985) and Pan Am Flight 103 (1988) exploding over Scotland but none of those events took place on American soil and the hijacking and bombing only peripherally involved Americans.

I can't really think of any comparable domestic acts of violence of that scale in the 1980's but I'm sure there has to be some. Am I totally blanking out here? Can you think of any? (I just remembered the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_assassination). And if 1992-2001 was, in fact, an abnormally violent nine year span, I wonder if any economists have looked to see if there's a correlation between violent outbursts such as these and economic downturns like the one we're currently experiencing? Like, maybe, historically, every time there's an extremely violent ten year period it's followed within several years by some kind of recession. I don't know. Just a thought.

In any case, I always found these moments of violence extremely interesting. How could you not? I've come to think of them as little glimpses into our, at bottom, barbaric nature and how civilization and our civilized tendencies have largely, and successfully, contained (or repressed, depending on how you look at it) those tendencies. And, I wonder: if you live in a relatively peaceful society does that mean your society is A) peaceful by nature and thus not prone to violent outbursts or does it mean your society is B) the MOST violent and therefore the most successful at repressing and containing its own outburst of violence? I would have to say the U.S. is more B than A (though I bet the reality is all cultures are a mix of both).

What do you think?