Republican White House hopefuls embrace killing criminals to fight crime
Some Republican contenders for their party's 2024 presidential nomination have turned to a blunt policy proposal to tamp down on crime: killing criminals.
The approach is not entirely novel, and it no doubt would face legal challenges. Major Republican presidential candidates have long advocated for an expansion of the death penalty, and former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, said police should rough up criminals during his 2017-2021 term.
But Republican strategists involved in previous campaigns and experts in political rhetoric say that calls to shoot, kill or otherwise injure criminals, at least those who commit the most heinous crimes, appear to be more common during this Republican primary race than they have been in other cycles.
The reasons are various, those people said.
Trump received little political blowback from inside the party for his rhetoric toward crime while in office, when he routinely called criminals «animals» and «thugs,» noted Doug Heye, a long-time Republican strategist.
Crime, meanwhile, is a greater concern for voters than it has been in previous elections, even as crime trends are mixed.
Violent crimes, including rape and murder, declined in the United States in 2022 from the previous year, according to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation this week.
