The phrase "a tendency to kill" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts discussing behavior, psychology, or tendencies related to violence or aggression.
Example: "The character in the novel exhibited a tendency to kill when provoked, raising questions about their mental state."
Alternatives: "an inclination to kill" or "a propensity for killing".
Unfortunately, torcetrapib had a tendency to kill more patients than Lipitor.
A brief survey of some of the traits that are likely biological adaptations in a number of species such as a tendency to kill 'step-children' or to philander ought to convince us that even if similar tendencies are likewise adaptations in human beings, present in us for similar evolutionary reasons, this would be no argument at all that we ought to engage in such behaviors.
They also have a tendency to kill anyone who makes even the slightest objection to their behavior.
It has a tendency to kill off ambition". About a week later, I walked back into the dealership with a copy of my resume in hand to sit down with the General Manager.
What they're doing now is more like getting on a bus, and then realizing that it's some sort of freaky unregulated test vehicle that has a tendency to kill random passengers".
But 2016 wasn't a normal year, and while it did produce a load of new phenomena, trends and crazes, it also had a tendency to kill them off within minutes of their coming into existence.
Roisin Campbell-Palmer, conservation projects manager at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), which has funded and helped run the Knapdale project, said there was a depressing tendency to kill beavers in the area.
There is the perversion of religious fervor into a blatantly human tendency to kill one another and blame it all on alternative versions of, ostensibly, the same god.
Thus in theory, throughout history, sport has proved a creative alternative to our recurring tendency to kill each other.
With its tendency to kill off major characters at brutally regular intervals, Spooks does not have to rely on a star.
This is central to top executives' well-known aversion to bad news and to the resulting tendency to "kill the messenger" who bears that news.
