National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence

The U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (National Violence Commission) was formed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in Executive Order on June 10, 1968, after the assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Members of the Commission were:

The National Violence Commission established task forces on assassination, group violence, individual acts of violence, law enforcement, media and violence, firearms, and violence in American history. As reported by John Herbers in the New York Times, the Chairman of the Commission, Milton Eisenhower, stated that the Task Force Report on Individual Acts of Violence was "by all odds the most important" of the reports written for the Commission.

The National Violence Commission was formed only a few months after release of the final report of the Kerner Commission, which assessed the big city protests of the 1960s. In its final report in December 1969, the Violence Commission, as the Kerner Commission, concluded that the most important policy issue was lack of employment and educational opportunity in inner city neighborhoods. The Commission framed lack of inner city opportunity within a larger American economy that prized material success and within a tradition of violence that the media transmitted particularly well:

In one of its most important final report passages, the National Violence Commission observed:

To be a young, poor male; to be undereducated and without means of escape from an oppressive urban environment; to want what the society claims is available (but mostly to others); to see around oneself illegitimate and often violent methods being used to achieve material success; and to observe others using these means with impunity – all this is to be burdened with an enormous set of influences that pull many toward crime and delinquency. To be also a Negro, Mexican or Puerto Rican American and subject to discrimination and segregation adds considerably to the pull of these other criminogenic forces.

The Violence Commission recommended new investments in jobs, training and education – totaling $20B per year in 1968 dollars. A long run "reordering of national priorities" was in order, said the Violence Commission, which shared the Kerner Commission’s moral vision that there could be no higher claim on the nation’s conscience. A majority of the members of the National Violence Commission, including both Republicans and Democrats, recommended confiscation of most handguns, restrictions on new handgun ownership to those who could demonstrate reasonable need, and identification of rifle and shotgun owners. When in human history other great civilizations have fallen, concluded the Violence Commission, "it was less often from external assault than from internal decay…The greatness and durability of most civilizations has been finally determined by how they have responded to these challenges from within. Ours will be no exception."

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