Just a couple things to add, though not necessarily to make a specific point...
First, regarding the killing of children as a cultural taboo, now that I think about it even this isn't consistent. Infanticide has been accepted in some society, and frowned upon but still widely practiced in many others. I don't have an hour to spend rummaging through my history books for specific sources, but here's an interesting article that summarizes the history of infanticide by regions.
http://www.infanticide.org/history.htm
Not a fun subject to think about, but I encourage people to actually read the article. Some of these contexts are fairly well known, such as female infanticide as a result of male preference, but others are not as commonly known, such as colonial American infanticide and child killing even within the boundaries of the law.
Second, my view that, overall, violence is largely unavoidable, except for perhaps temporary minor reductions, and the fact that I've talked about hunting as a kid and owning my own assault weapons/rifles/carbines whatever you want to call them in the past, people might assume I'm taking a stance against gun control. To be perfectly honest, I'm pretty neutral. I'm not gonna have my feeling hurt if I can't buy guns anymore, I can't really see the point in the average citizen owning a carbine designed specifically to engage human targets from half a kilometer away, and I do think the original intent of the 2nd amendment is outdated, but I don't think it's a battle worth fighting at this stage. Gun control may have worked in other countries, but there is one critical difference in the case of the U.S. Gun fanaticism is part of our culture. That is changing, and it is changing quickly, but we're still far from a point where you can start placing heavy restrictions on firearms without having serious social ramifications. It might be difficult to see that for those of us who don't happen to be hanging around many gun freaks, but I do. Half the people in my unit own multiple firearms, and when they say things like "When they pry them from my cold dead hands," I would caution that they're probably not kidding. History has shown us many times that forcing even the most obviously rational changes onto cultures that aren't ready for it often creates more problems than it solves. In the wake of the Connecticut shooting and the gun debates that naturally followed, gun purchases have surged due to fear that laws will change. We're actually effectively putting more guns on the streets just by having these conversations.
The genocides in Rwanda currently at the center of this discussion are a perfect example. Prior to the arrival of large numbers of missionaries backed by the imported legal systems of the colonial powers they represented, much of Africa was composed of small villages in which "war" was a little squabble with a rival village in which 10 to 20 people might be killed. A mighty warrior within this cultural context was one who had collected perhaps 4 or 5 of the heads of his enemies over the course of his life. Their cultures included things those missionaries saw as wrong, (including but not limited to infanticide and child killing), and we went in by the hoards and forced change onto them. And yes, I think it goes without saying that there were indeed other agendas as well, but to say that these changes didn't go over smoothly would be quite an understatement.
