Quote:
Originally Posted by fantASTic
Actually, yes, you do. You can't just say, "Well, in 1940 there were x amount of people in prison and now there's 3x that." What about the population boom? Even besides that, there are TONS of contributing factors - like ones I already mentioned - that DO make a difference. Your opinion is not completely, if at all, correct, and you should not present it as fact.
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Whether you believe it or not, children have gotten much worse than they've ever been. The school shootings I mentioned earlier are proof of that. Of course they don't happen all of the time. In fact they're rare. They're an unprecedented kind of adolescent violence. I don't have a complete understanding of why they happen and I've barely begun to consider their long term consequences. I do have an opinion on the problem though. It could be from mental illness to lack of discipline, from violent media to the availability of guns. Do these theories hold water? I think they do. I'm not saying school shootings never occured in the past, but I do know they began to increase in the early 90s, peaking in the late 90s, then falling back to zero in the early part of the 21st century. Also, they only dropped off because school officials caught the problem before it got started.
Is violence publicized more now? Yes, and I think media coverage does contribute to school violence panic and by far aggravates the difficulties for communities in which rampage episodes have occured. Also, youth violence itself, not just the shootings, increased dramatically in the late 1980s and early 90s, a period in which rates of crime and violence among other age groups actually went down. I don't think kids and guns mix well, because the increase in homicides committed by youths came ENTIRELY in the form of murders involving firearms.
Yes, there are other factors, but we have to start by looking at which youths are violent. I'm not being biased, but I think boys are more likely to commit violent acts than girls. I also think that almost all violent offenders first manifest their tendencies between the age of 14 and 18, based on patterns that I've seen. Beyond age, race or whatever, other risk factors for violence among youths include domestic violence and abuse, weak family bonding and ineffective supervision, lack of opportunities for education and employment, peers who engage in or accept violence, drug and alcohol use, gun possession and individual temperament. Kids have always looked to elevate their status among peers, to have a permanent identity so they can acquire power over others, or find justice or retribution. Now, they use firearms to do it.
I think the increase in violence comes from violent video games, availability of guns, the crack cocaine epidemic, and a culture of violence, but I don't think any of these factors work entirely by themselves. It starts with the deteriorating social and economic conditions of inner city neighborhoods. On top of the drug epidemic, when they're unavailable, kids find other resources to get high off of. Now you have to be 18 to purchase spray paint, glue and/or Robitussin. That's ridiculous. I totally can't see how some of you can't see that kids are far worse than they've ever been. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.