Look out for those angry old men

What’s going on? All along I thought hordes of angry young men posed the greatest threat to society. Experts are always telling us to worry about the social menace from brooding young Turks with too much energy and time on their hands. They commit the lion’s share of crimes and terrorist acts. They generally have the least to lose.

But in the last two weeks, we’ve witnessed an 88-year-old white supremacist allegedly kill a security guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and a 51-year-old religious zealot allegedly assassinate a doctor who performed abortions in Wichita, Kan. Have we entered the era of the angry old -- or at least middle-aged -- man?

That’s certainly the impression we got during last year’s presidential election. The snarling John McCain versus the unflappable Barack Obama is the cartoon sketch of the campaign that remains in my head. On election day, the only age demographic that the at-times apoplectically angry Republican candidate won was voters over 60. Are older Americans mad as hell and not going to take it anymore?

On the contrary, most surveys find that the older you are, the more contented you become. Sure, older folks might miss the good old days and grouse about their health, but by and large they tend to be more pleased with their lot than the young.

A recent study found that although older people reported a larger number of health problems, they tend to report far fewer difficulties -- particularly financial, interpersonal or crime problems -- overall. (For all our glorification of youth, young adults actually have more troubles with money, relationships and careers than their elders.) And it’s a truism that people who’ve survived life for several decades also tend to gain perspective on things, which creates less stress. The years tend to mellow us.

Up to a point, it’s a fact that as individuals age, rates of violence of fall. One study of psychiatric patients found that the proportion of patients over 40 who committed violent acts was one-third the rate of patients between the ages of 25 and 40. But, later in life, the risk of violence increases again, and older people actually are more violent than the contentment and stress data would suggest. People over 65 “commit more assaultive behavior” than middle-aged individuals, although not as much as young people.

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Local newspapers are chock full of stories about old men beating, shooting or attacking someone. In April in Sarasota, Fla., an 86-year-old man was arrested on charges of domestic battery, resisting arrest and battery on an officer. As in that case, violence among senior citizens can be related to mental impairment, which results in either poor impulse control or disorganized thinking.

In fact, the number of elderly being arrested and incarcerated has risen over the last two decades. The profile of an aging violent offender is, in its way, not that different than that of younger populations. Arrests for violent offenses among the elderly have been associated with males, low socioeconomic status, alcohol or drug abuse.

The killings at the Holocaust museum and the Wichita clinic at this point don’t fit perfectly within that description. They are overtly political, and they remind us of the April Homeland Security report that warned of a resurgence of right-wing extremism. However, age may play a factor in that as well. In general, hard-edged conservatism is more popular among older cohorts, which means that if the report is accurate, we might expect to see more violence committed by middle-aged or elderly partisans.

So far, however, most of the violence committed by the elderly is self-inflicted. According to the Violence Policy Center, white males age 65 and older are more likely than any other age group to commit suicide with a firearm, far more so than either adolescents or young adults. In 1992, researcher John McIntosh predicted that the number and proportion of elderly suicide victims would climb -- from one in every five suicides in the 1980s to one in every three by 2030.

So should the angry old men replace the angry young ones in our social imaginations?

No, not quite.

We still have more to fear from angry young men. But, at the very least, it shouldn’t surprise us so much that as the baby boomers and the country age, more and more violent tragedies are likely to come at the hands of older Americans.

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grodriguez@latimescolumnists.com