Suffer the little children

[DanaC]

In terms of violence by kids against kids, that's always been there. There have always been knife deaths over here. What's made the recent cases particularly shocking is the use of guns. We really aren't used to them yet. There are gangs in some of th inner city areas who look to an American style 'gang-culture' with guns holding a particular place within that gang culture, that a switchblade used to hold over here.

Those are just features though. Mostly the reasons are more socio economic than that. For the most part these incidents tend to happen in fairly deprived, high crime, urban areas. It's a complex issue though, I don't really know much about it. I would point out though that, although these are shocking and worrying trends, the numbers are still thankfully quite low overall.

The bullying thing. Yeah, it does seem to be worse. It's not that more kids are getting bullied, or more kids are engaged in bullying...it's that the results of the bullying so often seem to be worse than they would once have been. I don't know the answer.