Alcohol does Lead to Murders, and is the Smoking Gun

Causation and the crime: Is alcohol to blame simply because alcohol is imbibed before a crime is committed?

We are talking about the statistics showing alcohol is involved in about 40 percent of our murders and 50 percent of our rapes.

I think with drunken driving (about a third of traffic fatalities are attributed to drunk drivers), most accept that there is a causation. We understand that alcohol impairs the ability to react, so we do not question that the driver's ability to operate the vehicle safely is compromised.

But, the relationship to violent crimes is not as easy. Still, to me, it is evident. A person on alcohol does have impaired judgement, and is more inclined to irrational decisions. Given this, when they commit murder, it is, indeed, likely their irrational decisions lead to the crimes. Maybe not every time alcohol is involved, is it a causing factor, but in many and probably most, it is.

If a man shot and killed another man, but nobody saw the shooting, but a crowd of people saw him seconds later, holding the gun and blowing the smoke from it, it would be circumstantial evidence. I imagine the shooter looking up at the person who spotted him. "You can't prove a thing," the shooter says.

Technically, he would be right. He could have happened to have shot the gun at something else.

But, not all circumstantial evidence is created equal. I say, even without a forensics test to determine the bullet came from his gun, the man would be convicted.

So I think it should be that we should see a causation with alcohol. If we know too much alcohol leads to irrational decisions, and a lack of good judgement in what we are doing, and if alcohol is taken in 40 percent of the murders and about half of the rapes -- if those figures are correct -- then, of course, alcohol should be considered one of the causation factors.