Political violence is becoming increasingly common across the country \u2014 including in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
In 2025 alone, Americans witnessed the assassinations of political activist Charlie Kirk and a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, as well as a firebombing attack at Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s home in Harrisburg.<\/p>\n
69 News reporter Amelia Sack sat down with Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday to discuss the rise in political violence and what can be done to combat it.<\/p>\n
\u201cViolence is unacceptable at all times,\u201d Sunday said.<\/p>\n
The United States is seeing a disturbing trend of political violence. To combat it, Sunday said there needs to be a change in rhetoric.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to monitor the way we communicate. What can we do differently to lower the temperature? I think that is absolutely critical,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sunday also pointed to social media\u2019s role in shaping public perception of current events and elected officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are completely misinformed by what they\u2019re seeing on social media. They might see snippets of a conversation that make them think one thing, without even looking at the entire conversation to understand the true meaning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Sunday emphasized the importance of mental health.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the worst things we see in society involve individuals who, at some point in their lives, had a mental health crisis that was never addressed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As attorney general, Sunday said he has worked to increase access to mental health care by expanding the Law Enforcement Treatment Initiative in counties across the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something police are doing in collaboration with the community to help people get mental health treatment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Overall, Sunday said combating political violence requires a multi-layered approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we look at the issue of political violence, it comes down to the type of leadership we exhibit \u2014 how we talk to other people. Just because someone is a political opponent doesn\u2019t make them an enemy,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to be aware of the dangers of social media and also increase access to mental health treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Political violence is becoming increasingly common across the country \u2014 including in Pennsylvania. In 2025 alone, Americans witnessed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3651,3649,322,3650,28,30,29,41,3652],"class_list":["post-3970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-assassinations","tag-attorney-general-dave-sunday","tag-firebombing","tag-mental-health-care","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-political-violence","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}