Suse,
The spectacular, mass murders like Columbine get the most attention but less than 500 people have been killed in mass casualty attacks on schools in the U.S. School shootings happen at the rate of about one a week in the U.S, the perpetrators are mostly black and if the injuries inflicted are not fatal or if the gun is produced and discharged without wounding anyone we just don't hear about it.
Google the names Trey Foster, Michael McNabb,Stephen Gilbert, J'Morian Bell, Quintarius Mabry, to name just a handful.
Most school shootings like most other shootings in the U.S are black on black and related to gang activity and the drug trade.

Yes Lego, our cadets had rifle range shooting a sessions about 5 times a year, always on a Saturday. Our cadet parade day was Thursday. We issued our cadets with WW11 vintage 303s on Thursday afternoons, to take home, & they were returned mostly on Monday mornings. I say mostly as a few would always forget them, after all they were nothing special, just another gun.

I became a CUO, [cadet officer] at 15, & was instructing & overseeing a platoon of 30 cadets on the range at that age. We had 3 platoons & only one teacher officer overseeing the lot. Perhaps we grew up quicker than todays kids.

Can you imagine how we would go today, if Kokoda were to happen today? We only held the Japs back then because most Oz boys were experienced rifle shots. Today most officer cadets, doing their introductory course before going to Duntroon have no idea of handling a weapon.

My son, who was instructing these people told us it was hard to get them to keep their eyes open, when the gun went "BANG". Oh, & he said the girls were even worse.

I don't think it matters much what subs we might buy, the crew will have their eyes shut if they ever have to shoot anything.

LOL Has been,

I was also a school cadet and often spent my summers roaming the hills and reducing the rabbit population around my grand mothers place.

I had gun safety drilled into me by my father who bought me an air rifle at the age of 12.

We carried our rifles to and from school

To Susieonline.

The most significant factor in the degree of violent criminal behaviour in any society is the acceptance of cultural values which endorse violence within that society. Since the late 60's, western entertainment media has gone from reinforcing pro social values to glamourising violent criminal behaviour and drug abuse. This has occurred during a time of unprecedented social change where children are becoming more divorced from parental supervision. The primary socialising factor in advanced societies is the family, and this institution is now under threat from a variety of sources. Around one third of families today are single parent households, usually a woman doing a heroic job juggling full or part time work while trying to raise "latch key" children.

It is these poorly socialised children missing a dad and who's only window to the world is a TV set, who are most at risk from accepting the anti social messages being constantly directed at them by media executives who's only concern is their quarterly balance sheet.

Heart throb Leonardo Di Caprio starred in a movie (Basketball Diaries) in which he plays a student who "dreams" of walking into his classroom in a long black leather coat and a shotgun, then starts shooting his teachers and fellow students. Within months, young students in the USA emulated his behaviour and started walking into schools in long leather coats with guns.

If the images and messages transmitted by the media do not influence behaviour, then you must agree that there is nothing wrong with the cigarette and alcohol industries putting advertisements in children's magazines. But if you can understand that the media can affect people's behaviour, then you should be able to make the connection that exposing impressionable minors to images glamourising violence, criminality, revenge behaviour, and drug abuse, is not a smart thing to do.

Our culture is changing to one accepting of violence because we are allowing our entertainment media to manipulate our cultural values.

Oh I don't know about the media being totally at fault, or the 'fatherless' kiddies LEGO.

Humans have done a good job being violent long before the media was as prolific as it is today, and the many fatherless households after the two very violent World Wars did not produce an increase in community violence did it?

I don't think we can blame human violence on any one factor.....it is just in some humans nature to be violent.

"If the images and messages transmitted by the media do not influence behaviour, then you must agree that there is nothing wrong with the cigarette and alcohol industries putting advertisements in children's magazines. But if you can understand that the media can affect people's behaviour, then you should be able to make the connection that exposing impressionable minors to images glamourising violence, criminality, revenge behaviour, and drug abuse, is not a smart thing to do.

Our culture is changing to one accepting of violence because we are allowing our entertainment media to manipulate our cultural values."

Well said LEGO, I agree 100%. The dumbing down of society through a poor education system is another factor. Young people seem to not be able to apply any critical analysis of the plots and probabilities of the new breed of movies and TV shows (mostly American in origin). They just blindly accept the hero can kill 20 - 30 bad guys without remorse, leap like superman, fight nearly to the death without losing any teeth, throw another man through a brick wall and drive like the best stuntman in the world. It takes being stupid to watch most of the American made action movies which seem to be getting worse as computer generated special effects get better.

There has to be an associated desensitisation from watching that crap and playing similar video games.

Suse, the violence is increasing and there is more to this than it seems you are willing to accept.