news in the UK at the moment about young kids killing each other with guns and knives. One a day it seems. My question is this: wouldn't more emphasis on music making for kids be a way of channeling their energy positively? I know there are schemes but they are very few & far between. ITM could be one, readily accessible, strand in an approach where kids could be given structured access to instruments with professional tutors, instead of forcing them to grind through the f***ing NC.
Any thoughts?
I like the idea of music, but I think you got to do something a bit more appealing than ITM. Hip Hop is one channel, and, I understand, there are some areas which have run schemes involving this music that have made a difference.
In the St Pauls area of Bristol there has been a scheme for a few years now run by kids, for kids, with a sort of Hip Hop/Gospel choir. I've seen them - they're fantastic, and, as I understand it, to a large extent self-taught, in that the older ones then teach the younger kids coming through. Totally brilliant.
i dont leave the house without my bullet-proof-bodhran™.
i think it might be useful in places like Glasgow to give kids from bad areas access to trad music lessons.
it would promote confidence, mental and physical dexterity, social skills.
a preventative measure before it starts to kick off up here as well.
Terrific Idea, hard to pull off though. In my experiences the only kids that will learn to play music are the ones with a strong desire to do so, forcing them to learn music, or music that they don't like, does more harm than good. Also starting to teach kids music now will most likely not prevent the current batch of messed up kids from doing the things that you describe.
There was a scheme in a neighbouring area to teach every kid in primary school an instrument. Very nice - but as a school teacher I find it much more important that kids get enough food, sleep, love and attention, in non-violent surroundings.
You won't have to look very far to find children who seriously suffer from their personal living conditions.
Trad. music is an expression of community spirit so the absence of it says a lot about our western societies.
Music can help to give you an idea of who you are. And the kids seem to need this urgently.
I thank the Lord that I had the good sense to get out of the UK in 1975 and move to Flanders,a peaceful civilized country.I've lived in a village near the Dutch border for the last 15 years,there's never been a burglary in that time,I don't lock my front door when I go out and in all the years I've been here I've never seen a fight in a bar,there are no gangs of feral children or tattooed,shaven-headed yahoos on the streets.When I go to a session in Antwerp I wander back to my car at all hours in the morning without watching my back,no gangs of drunks causing mayhem .What has gone wrong in the UK?
I've just come away from a schools summer camp where I had been asked to introduce some teenagers to the violin. I expected it to be awful, but found that the kids I was given had chosen the violin out of a selection of instruments including drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and sax. Some of the kids, including some from deprived backgrounds showed a real interest in the violin and I thought how good it would be to be able to take them away and teach them how to play.
It might not suit all kids, but it may suit some, so perhaps it''s worth seeking out school summer camps/youth groups/schools etc just to show the kids what is out there and to give them the chance.
I also believe that it is the relationships that kids build up with others that help them to develop confidence and to cope with life's challenges. Perhaps it doesn't matter what they learn as long as someone values them enough to spend time with them teaching and encouraging them.
Oh for god's sake I've never read such a load of old daily mail reading old man paranoia. Yeah, why don't you just get a few old white men with beards and tin bloody whistles to sort it out.
When an eleven year old child gets shot to death by another child just for the fun of it I think that the paranoia is justified.People over here ask me what on earth is going on in the UK,and I have no answers.
There was a Newsnight (UK BBC flagship nightly news programme) the other night where the entire programme was dedicated to the subject. The programme opened with the statistics that although UK crime, including violent crime, has been falling consistently for a decade, perception of crime is increasing. The programme went on for another hour and made not one single more reference to this. Of course, you will all simply doubt the statistics
The statistics may be true, but if so they may be dipping from a considerable height (for all I know). A lesser height would still indicate crime enough to be alarming.
And as an attempt to not get this deleted by Jeremy:
"I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument, and an unsuspected yearning to learn to play on it, that are bound to wake up and demand attention some day. Therefore, you who rail at such as disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a fiddle, beware! for sooner or later your own time will come."
For once "Four" is actually right. Getting Black army officers to organise adventure weekends, people to teach music, and blaming violence on TV will not work. US of A, United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland" are all societies based on greed. TV is to blame here, because we are sold that you need to be rich and have all the latest styles and gadgets, otherwise you are a loser, a nobody.
A better distribution of wealth would solve most of the crime problem.
I worked in juvenile court for a year and a half. Whew. The really shocking part was the boy-on-boy violence. The pattern is that one teenage boy is isolated in some way -- examples I saw were a kid with developmental disabilities who had the misfortune to (gasp) ride his bike in a park by himself; a boy who was no longer welcome in a clique (his friends videotaped him being beat up, and you could hear his nose breaking on the video), a kid whose family has just come to the U.S. and is despised by those who have been here like three weeks longer. Girls did surprisingly little of this; in fact, there were at least two boys for every girl who showed up in court, usually on shoplifting charges.
I see the problem as tolerance of violence between boys. As I recall it, fistfights at school among boys were tolerated to a point with a "they just do that" attitude. I think that's the mistake and, though others may disagree, where it all begins.
i think the real problem in the USA and UK is the mainstream media. LOTS of people watch TV and watch the news and what do they report? they take a tragic mining accident where one person died and 22 lived or whatnot and focus the entire story on the one person who died! Then there are vicious movies and TV programs projecting sex violence and bad moral behavior ALL the time, and yet we wonder where the problem is? The media's sorry excuses for reporters are reporting only the bad and not the good! and then on top of that slandering more than half of their stories to make them sound worse to entertain people. It's so twisted no person can ever undo it....
Why make them play ITM? Perhaps the way to engage kids in UK is to re-introduce them to their own cultures and music - a pretty diverse set of traditions it is these days too. From Morris to Shetland fiddle music, Indian Ragas and Welsh harp, there's plenty to go at.
So let them hear their own stories and songs, learn their own tunes and perhaps they will better understand where they come from and who they are. From that position they will better understand their place in the world and hopefully feel more able to express their identity with confidence and humility and without the jingoistic bilge that blights so much associated with national identity.
Bring back conscription!! or bootcamp or community service or something. I know that I was pretty much left to my own devices on leaving school at 17 (I thus fell into the murky world of jigs and reels!). The parents have precious little control over their kids and the result is the Lord of the Flies situation we see in a lot of English cities these days. The kids need a positive outside influence at this very sensitive age. I reckon I'd be much better off now if I'd been guided more at that age. Six months up in the highlands anyone?
"although UK crime, including violent crime, has been falling consistently for a decade, perception of crime is increasing."
That was Michael referring to a Newsnight programme recently. Yesterday's front page of the Sunday Times, however, had the headline "Ministers 'covered up' gun crime" and referred to the official Home Office statistics that 864 people were killed or injured in gun attacks in England and Wales in 1998-99 compared with 3,821 last year. That's an increase of more than fourfold in the last 7 years.
I wasn't suggesting we force anyone to play ITM, or anything else for that matter. I just wondered whether music might provide a way for these blighted kids, who will after all become blighted adults, to experience the rush of endorphins that we all get from playing. I know it's not a new idea, but it must be better than our current meat grinder/target driven/test obsessed educational model which alienates nearly all kids, not just the violent ones.
Thanks for that, Michael, and I do take your point about crime, and its perception, in general. However, I can still see how this could fit in with the Sunday Times' reported figures on gun crime in particular which, according to them, is rising dramatically. If so, then that is something which is disturbing in itself, even if overall crime, including violent crime, is falling.
MaxF: I wish someone had introduced me to ITM when I was at school then I would have had more time playing it rather than having to wait until my late twenties to get involved . . .
But then growing up on the edge of Birmingham (England) I was also totally ignorant of my own culture too - we learnt Joseph and his Soddin' Technicolour Dreamcoat at school, not the songs of The Watersons or The Copper Family, which are great to sing along to. As for Indian ragas (or pretty much anything else) - forget it - way beyond the myopic scope of my schools music education curriculum.
We've discussed before how, if you imagine yourself playing in front of the public then you suffer less nervousness before a gig/session/whatever because in your mind you have already done it many times and you have become almost immune to it. If todays kids are spending hours on end playing computer games where their brains practice killing other characters over and over again, then, when it comes to real life, they have already done it several times and the line between imaginary shooting and real shooting is blurred to the extent that they don'f FEEL the difference. Hence we have a problem.
You all seem to have good, well thought out points on this. Well done.
I live in Spain and that kind of violence doesn't exist AT ALL. (Here they kill their wives!!) Closer family ties? sure! society is more integrated, young and old together.
The islands seems to leave young men to fend for themselves, hence Englands violence and Irelands suicide problems. Where are the sociologists? and what have they been doing?
I'm with Giani. The problem starts with families. Where do parents think there children are when they're out shooting, gun buying etc. Where i live there are children as young as 7-8 out at 2-3 am. It's not surprising that parents can't then control them when they become teenagers. Children need discipline and boundaries of acceptable behaviour and most like some sense of order to their lives and there are many parents failing to provide this.
The problem is that children demand consumer goods that parents then work long hours to provide - so the summer holidays see loads of children aimlessly roaming the streets while their parents are working to provide them with mobile phones, designer trainers and the latest computer games.
But, ironically, does music have a part to play in all this? Check out violent, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, etc., lyrics to hip hop, gangsta, ragga, etc., all now, sadly, mainstream. A sorry picture on the front of the Guardian this Saturday of a young lad from a Liverpool "crew" wearing a ski mask and camo jacket, pointing a shotgun at the camera. What?? YouTube allowed this on their site...
How would this boy get on in Gaza/Basra/Afghanistan etc. I wonder.
We say that if you want to become good at ITM then you need to listen to it over and over again until it becomes instilled in your psyche. That is what some kids are doing with negative/antisocial music/computer games/videos. What works for us must work for them too.
Bring back conscription? I suppose if we train them to kill, at least so many will not be wounded, we can be certain they will die?
And Nine or whatever, Sweden has a "cosy" prison system, based on help and integration into society rather than punishment. But then Sweden is socialist, with a good society to integrate into.
Gaols in the USA and Britain are merely university's of crime.
sounds to me like the kiddie version of jung's "modern man in search of a soul." hard to learn empathy and imaginative ways to spend your time if you are a functionally illiterate latchkey kid living on chip sandwiches, ciggies and video games.
horrendous
horrendous
news in the UK at the moment about young kids killing each other with guns and knives. One a day it seems. My question is this: wouldn't more emphasis on music making for kids be a way of channeling their energy positively? I know there are schemes but they are very few & far between. ITM could be one, readily accessible, strand in an approach where kids could be given structured access to instruments with professional tutors, instead of forcing them to grind through the f***ing NC.
Any thoughts?
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by maxF
Re: horrendous
I like the idea of music, but I think you got to do something a bit more appealing than ITM. Hip Hop is one channel, and, I understand, there are some areas which have run schemes involving this music that have made a difference.
In the St Pauls area of Bristol there has been a scheme for a few years now run by kids, for kids, with a sort of Hip Hop/Gospel choir. I've seen them - they're fantastic, and, as I understand it, to a large extent self-taught, in that the older ones then teach the younger kids coming through. Totally brilliant.
I'll remember the name in a minute ...
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: horrendous
Or was it Barton Hill? Lazyhound - help me out here!
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: horrendous
i dont leave the house without my bullet-proof-bodhran™.
i think it might be useful in places like Glasgow to give kids from bad areas access to trad music lessons.
it would promote confidence, mental and physical dexterity, social skills.
a preventative measure before it starts to kick off up here as well.
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by DubChieftain
Re: horrendous
Terrific Idea, hard to pull off though. In my experiences the only kids that will learn to play music are the ones with a strong desire to do so, forcing them to learn music, or music that they don't like, does more harm than good. Also starting to teach kids music now will most likely not prevent the current batch of messed up kids from doing the things that you describe.
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by Fellenbaum
Re: horrendous
There was a scheme in a neighbouring area to teach every kid in primary school an instrument. Very nice - but as a school teacher I find it much more important that kids get enough food, sleep, love and attention, in non-violent surroundings.
You won't have to look very far to find children who seriously suffer from their personal living conditions.
Trad. music is an expression of community spirit so the absence of it says a lot about our western societies.
Music can help to give you an idea of who you are. And the kids seem to need this urgently.
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by kuec
Re: horrendous
I thank the Lord that I had the good sense to get out of the UK in 1975 and move to Flanders,a peaceful civilized country.I've lived in a village near the Dutch border for the last 15 years,there's never been a burglary in that time,I don't lock my front door when I go out and in all the years I've been here I've never seen a fight in a bar,there are no gangs of feral children or tattooed,shaven-headed yahoos on the streets.When I go to a session in Antwerp I wander back to my car at all hours in the morning without watching my back,no gangs of drunks causing mayhem .What has gone wrong in the UK?
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by dafydd
Re: horrendous
I've just come away from a schools summer camp where I had been asked to introduce some teenagers to the violin. I expected it to be awful, but found that the kids I was given had chosen the violin out of a selection of instruments including drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and sax. Some of the kids, including some from deprived backgrounds showed a real interest in the violin and I thought how good it would be to be able to take them away and teach them how to play.
It might not suit all kids, but it may suit some, so perhaps it''s worth seeking out school summer camps/youth groups/schools etc just to show the kids what is out there and to give them the chance.
I also believe that it is the relationships that kids build up with others that help them to develop confidence and to cope with life's challenges. Perhaps it doesn't matter what they learn as long as someone values them enough to spend time with them teaching and encouraging them.
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by bowburner
Re: horrendous
Oh for god's sake I've never read such a load of old daily mail reading old man paranoia. Yeah, why don't you just get a few old white men with beards and tin bloody whistles to sort it out.
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: horrendous
I've never read the Daily Mail in my life.
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by dafydd
Re: horrendous
How would you sort it out llig?
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by dafydd
Re: horrendous
When an eleven year old child gets shot to death by another child just for the fun of it I think that the paranoia is justified.People over here ask me what on earth is going on in the UK,and I have no answers.
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by dafydd
Re: horrendous
Rats! Dafydd got in first. That's what I was going to say.
So, what *is* your solution, Michael?
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: horrendous
We're waiting.
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by dafydd
Re: horrendous
I suppose that llig is aSun "reader"
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by dafydd
Re: horrendous
There was a Newsnight (UK BBC flagship nightly news programme) the other night where the entire programme was dedicated to the subject. The programme opened with the statistics that although UK crime, including violent crime, has been falling consistently for a decade, perception of crime is increasing. The programme went on for another hour and made not one single more reference to this. Of course, you will all simply doubt the statistics
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: horrendous
'There are lies, damned lies and statistics' -- Mark Twain
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by dafydd
Re: horrendous
I suppose that the dead child is a'statistic' too?
# Posted on August 26th 2007 by dafydd
Re: horrendous
The statistics may be true, but if so they may be dipping from a considerable height (for all I know). A lesser height would still indicate crime enough to be alarming.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by nicholas
Re: horrendous
And as an attempt to not get this deleted by Jeremy:
"I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument, and an unsuspected yearning to learn to play on it, that are bound to wake up and demand attention some day. Therefore, you who rail at such as disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a fiddle, beware! for sooner or later your own time will come."
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: horrendous
"Old white men with beards and tin bloody whistles"... That's me!
South African style " k w e l a " bands, anyone?
(They use tin whistles.)
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by nicholas
Re: horrendous
For once "Four" is actually right. Getting Black army officers to organise adventure weekends, people to teach music, and blaming violence on TV will not work. US of A, United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland" are all societies based on greed. TV is to blame here, because we are sold that you need to be rich and have all the latest styles and gadgets, otherwise you are a loser, a nobody.
A better distribution of wealth would solve most of the crime problem.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: horrendous
I worked in juvenile court for a year and a half. Whew. The really shocking part was the boy-on-boy violence. The pattern is that one teenage boy is isolated in some way -- examples I saw were a kid with developmental disabilities who had the misfortune to (gasp) ride his bike in a park by himself; a boy who was no longer welcome in a clique (his friends videotaped him being beat up, and you could hear his nose breaking on the video), a kid whose family has just come to the U.S. and is despised by those who have been here like three weeks longer. Girls did surprisingly little of this; in fact, there were at least two boys for every girl who showed up in court, usually on shoplifting charges.
I see the problem as tolerance of violence between boys. As I recall it, fistfights at school among boys were tolerated to a point with a "they just do that" attitude. I think that's the mistake and, though others may disagree, where it all begins.
Just ask the court reporter <wg>.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by cathrynb
Re: horrendous
i think the real problem in the USA and UK is the mainstream media. LOTS of people watch TV and watch the news and what do they report? they take a tragic mining accident where one person died and 22 lived or whatnot and focus the entire story on the one person who died! Then there are vicious movies and TV programs projecting sex violence and bad moral behavior ALL the time, and yet we wonder where the problem is? The media's sorry excuses for reporters are reporting only the bad and not the good! and then on top of that slandering more than half of their stories to make them sound worse to entertain people. It's so twisted no person can ever undo it....
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by WannabeWhistler
Re: horrendous
Why make them play ITM? Perhaps the way to engage kids in UK is to re-introduce them to their own cultures and music - a pretty diverse set of traditions it is these days too. From Morris to Shetland fiddle music, Indian Ragas and Welsh harp, there's plenty to go at.
So let them hear their own stories and songs, learn their own tunes and perhaps they will better understand where they come from and who they are. From that position they will better understand their place in the world and hopefully feel more able to express their identity with confidence and humility and without the jingoistic bilge that blights so much associated with national identity.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: horrendous
Bring back conscription!! or bootcamp or community service or something. I know that I was pretty much left to my own devices on leaving school at 17 (I thus fell into the murky world of jigs and reels!). The parents have precious little control over their kids and the result is the Lord of the Flies situation we see in a lot of English cities these days. The kids need a positive outside influence at this very sensitive age. I reckon I'd be much better off now if I'd been guided more at that age. Six months up in the highlands anyone?
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by Giani
Re: horrendous
As for bringing English roots to English kids read Paul Davenport's essay:
http://www.hallamtrads.co.uk/Research_files/Cultural.pdf
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by kuec
Re: horrendous
"although UK crime, including violent crime, has been falling consistently for a decade, perception of crime is increasing."
That was Michael referring to a Newsnight programme recently. Yesterday's front page of the Sunday Times, however, had the headline "Ministers 'covered up' gun crime" and referred to the official Home Office statistics that 864 people were killed or injured in gun attacks in England and Wales in 1998-99 compared with 3,821 last year. That's an increase of more than fourfold in the last 7 years.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: horrendous
I wasn't suggesting we force anyone to play ITM, or anything else for that matter. I just wondered whether music might provide a way for these blighted kids, who will after all become blighted adults, to experience the rush of endorphins that we all get from playing. I know it's not a new idea, but it must be better than our current meat grinder/target driven/test obsessed educational model which alienates nearly all kids, not just the violent ones.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by maxF
Re: horrendous
http://uk.sitestat.com/homeoffice/homeoffice/s?rds.crime0607summpdf&ns_type=pdf&ns_url=%5Bhttp://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/crime0607summ.pdf%5D
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: horrendous
Thanks for that, Michael, and I do take your point about crime, and its perception, in general. However, I can still see how this could fit in with the Sunday Times' reported figures on gun crime in particular which, according to them, is rising dramatically. If so, then that is something which is disturbing in itself, even if overall crime, including violent crime, is falling.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: horrendous
I used to work in newspapers and know how they opperate. It's a case of finding controversy, not reporting trends.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: horrendous
Probably so, Michael, probably so.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: horrendous
MaxF: I wish someone had introduced me to ITM when I was at school then I would have had more time playing it rather than having to wait until my late twenties to get involved . . .
But then growing up on the edge of Birmingham (England) I was also totally ignorant of my own culture too - we learnt Joseph and his Soddin' Technicolour Dreamcoat at school, not the songs of The Watersons or The Copper Family, which are great to sing along to. As for Indian ragas (or pretty much anything else) - forget it - way beyond the myopic scope of my schools music education curriculum.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: horrendous
We've discussed before how, if you imagine yourself playing in front of the public then you suffer less nervousness before a gig/session/whatever because in your mind you have already done it many times and you have become almost immune to it. If todays kids are spending hours on end playing computer games where their brains practice killing other characters over and over again, then, when it comes to real life, they have already done it several times and the line between imaginary shooting and real shooting is blurred to the extent that they don'f FEEL the difference. Hence we have a problem.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by bowburner
Re: horrendous
You all seem to have good, well thought out points on this. Well done.
I live in Spain and that kind of violence doesn't exist AT ALL. (Here they kill their wives!!) Closer family ties? sure! society is more integrated, young and old together.
The islands seems to leave young men to fend for themselves, hence Englands violence and Irelands suicide problems. Where are the sociologists? and what have they been doing?
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by Giani
Re: horrendous
I'm with Giani. The problem starts with families. Where do parents think there children are when they're out shooting, gun buying etc. Where i live there are children as young as 7-8 out at 2-3 am. It's not surprising that parents can't then control them when they become teenagers. Children need discipline and boundaries of acceptable behaviour and most like some sense of order to their lives and there are many parents failing to provide this.
The problem is that children demand consumer goods that parents then work long hours to provide - so the summer holidays see loads of children aimlessly roaming the streets while their parents are working to provide them with mobile phones, designer trainers and the latest computer games.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by Tarrantella
Re: horrendous
The sociologists have been making a nice living out of it.
(I don't mean it, I swear...such demonisation is wrong..!)
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by nicholas
Re: horrendous
But, ironically, does music have a part to play in all this? Check out violent, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, etc., lyrics to hip hop, gangsta, ragga, etc., all now, sadly, mainstream. A sorry picture on the front of the Guardian this Saturday of a young lad from a Liverpool "crew" wearing a ski mask and camo jacket, pointing a shotgun at the camera. What?? YouTube allowed this on their site...
How would this boy get on in Gaza/Basra/Afghanistan etc. I wonder.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by maxF
Re: horrendous
We say that if you want to become good at ITM then you need to listen to it over and over again until it becomes instilled in your psyche. That is what some kids are doing with negative/antisocial music/computer games/videos. What works for us must work for them too.
# Posted on August 27th 2007 by bowburner
Re: horrendous
Bring back conscription? I suppose if we train them to kill, at least so many will not be wounded, we can be certain they will die?
And Nine or whatever, Sweden has a "cosy" prison system, based on help and integration into society rather than punishment. But then Sweden is socialist, with a good society to integrate into.
Gaols in the USA and Britain are merely university's of crime.
# Posted on August 28th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: horrendous
Sorry Ben, I can't remember whether it was the St Paul's area or Barton Hill either.
# Posted on August 28th 2007 by lazyhound
Re: horrendous
Yes, bring back constipation: that will stop them...
# Posted on August 28th 2007 by nicholas
Re: horrendous
sounds to me like the kiddie version of jung's "modern man in search of a soul." hard to learn empathy and imaginative ways to spend your time if you are a functionally illiterate latchkey kid living on chip sandwiches, ciggies and video games.
# Posted on August 28th 2007 by ceemonster
Re: horrendous
Isn't it odd that no one has mentioned the easy availability of weapons as part of the problem so far?
http://www.controlarms.org/
OK, I'll instantly stop being political.
Swords to ploughshares.
cannons to didgeridoos
pistols to low whistles
...
# Posted on August 28th 2007 by kuec