More nations and people than ever before have the ability to destroy large numbers of other people. Everyone wants to assert their way or their rights. The cost of gun related violence is one example. School shootings are another example. One or two students bent on vengeance can too easily murder many students or an entire school.
International terrorists can strike at major metropolitan areas, killing thousands at a time.
Drug trafficers with heavy weaponry regularly kill others in the US and other countries. And while one warped individual blows up government buildings to assert his feelings about government, another blows up the Olympics and abortion clinics to make his point. Yet another burned twenty-six churches in the midWest and South. There were 8000 hate crimes in the US in 1998. Ethnic cleansing is another example.