The Real Epidemic of Violence is Ordinary, Every Day and Global Horrific tragedies like the mass killing shortly after midnight on Friday at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado are somewhat akin to spectacular terrorist attacks. These tragedies provoke urgent calls for policy changes and moral reckonings. But we miss a real opportunity by focusing exclusively on violence through the lens these mass tragedies create. Because the fact is the systematic patterns of violence the world over are more troubling, and more deadly, than the rare occurrences of mentally ill people going on periodic rampages. Recently, I was in West Oakland, a community just east of San Francisco. There is a lot to recommend West Oakland - it is home to the oldest community of Victorian homes anywhere in the East San Fransisco Bay and it has a vibrant history and many decent people. But West Oakland is also a community beset by violence. The man I was visiting there, Craig, told me how he had recently watched a 12-year old boy riding his bicycle in the street when a clip from his chrome-colored pistol fell out of his pocket. When it did, the spring unlocked, spilling several bullets out onto the street. "And this kid just sat there, in the middle of the day, calmly packing his bullets back into the clip," Craig told me, "Then he reholstered the pistol, got on his bike again and rode off." Craig told me that virtually every small boy (as well as a few girls) he sees on the streets outside his house has a gun. Kids protect themselves with guns, they also use them to shoot at and kill other people, and there is nothing particularly unusual about it. Unfortunately, this blasé attitude about guns is far more endemic than most people realize. Last year in Oakland, three children under the age of five were gunned down in separate incidents. I meet with parents all the time who have lost children to street violence. It's happening in every major American city, and many smaller ones, too. The outrage at a community level is palpable. But just as palpable is the sense among many that no one else really cares. Is it because very often the people - the perpetrators as well as the victims - are minorities? In the United States, young black men between the ages of 18 and 24 are roughly 16 times as likely to be murdered as their white counterparts. The next most vulnerable people are Latinos. Even as crime declines nationwide, according to the FBI's statistics, there are pockets of extreme violence and instability that continue to persist, and more so each year. These pockets of violence result not only in consistently high homicide rates but also generational patterns of violence that are eating away at the social fabric of these communities, and of the country. The impact of systematic and extreme violence in America, Europe, anywhere in the world, really, has led to what psychologists call "toxic stress." This can manifest often as post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, and a staggering variety of other psychological and behavioral problems, but so too, and possibly more frighteningly, in biological ways. In other words, constant violence can actually change a person's brain structure. When I was based in Cape Town, I reported on gang violence in a township called Hanover Park, barely 3 miles from one of the city's most affluent suburban areas. It is half way around the world from the United States, and yet the people in Hanover Park are dealing with many of the same pernicious issues. Gangs roam the streets unchecked, drug use is rampant and residents are accustomed to witnessing and being victimized by exceedingly high levels of violence. This violence is routine and pervasive, and it has its roots in 350 years of colonial rule and half a century of institutionalized oppression in the form of apartheid. The "toxic stress" in places like Hanover Park and Oakland is off the charts - very often higher than levels recorded in soldiers returning from war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. Study after study from the world's poorest and most vulnerable communities, including in America, yield the same results. This toxic stress leads, in turn, to entire communities being traumatized and re-traumatized. When I was Baghdad bureau chief for Newsweek during the height of the civil war and insurgency, I witnessed extreme levels of violence, as one might expect. But wars end. What astonished me when I returned to the U.S, however, is that many of the poorest and most vulnerable communities have been experiencing traumatic stress for, quite literally, decades. They suffer from PTSD, but they're unable to escape the situation that's causing the trauma, so the cycle repeats itself. When this occurs, the capacity for those communities to properly self-regulate, to protect themselves, to nurture their children and provide for their elderly is destroyed. Why are we surprised when angry Arab youth from the Parisian banlieus, where I've also worked, erupt in rioting mayhem? Should it come as a shock that young Arab girls from those Paris suburbs are routinely gang-raped and beaten by roving gangs of thugs? Violence comes in many forms - it looks different in Baghdad than it does in Mexico City. But the lasting effect is the same: trauma. And as the saying in clinical circles goes: hurt people hurt other people. Mass shootings like the Aurora theater massacre ignite the imagination of the larger public because people think: it could have happened to me. But consider that for many thousands of people around the world, that is a question they face on a daily basis. The fact is that violence is an abstraction until it happens to you. What happened in Colorado is horrific. But somewhere on the streets of West Oakland a 12-year old boy with a gun is riding a bicycle. His mother is encouraging him to join a gang. His potential for future violence is great and scary. And people should be talking about it.