It's not guns that are the problem.....

[Paprika]

I live in a country where we pretty much have free healthcare (dental would be a nice addition). When my eldest was born in South Africa, it cost me many thousands of Rands in medical fees. My youngest three cost me about $100 total.

Don't you pay for the "free" healthcare with higher taxes?

[Raphael]

Don't you pay for the "free" healthcare with higher taxes?

Possibly, but cheaper than what my medical aid and gap insurance in South Africa cost me. (the gap insurance is because in SA the government has restricted how much your medical aid can pay on a claim, but there is no restriction on what the medical care provider can charge, and this amount can often be double what the medical aid legally can pay).

Additionally we currently receive a Working For Families tax credit which works out to me not actually paying much tax at all.

A fair chuck of my tax is also ACC which covers everyone in NZ, including visitors, for any injuries (part of the laws ACC also removed the right to sue other parties, so if you have a fender bender, you can't sue the other person for your medical costs, the state covers it all.) There is also a tax on fuel and car registrations that go towards ACC......and personally I've probably received way more in treatment from ACC than I've paid in (I have a TFCC tear in my right wrist, already had one surgery and possibly looking at another)

[Teallaura]

There isn't a magic, one-size-fits-all cure. Lots of things add up to get to the point where kids are assaulting other kids.

1) I'm pro-reasonable gun control - but it is at best an impediment, not a deterrent. Forget more restrictive licensing - kids can't buy the things now. Guns not in use should be required to be secured and your home owners policy can deny if not as well as becoming civilly liable for damages done. Invest in a gun safe already and keep the thing locked up when you aren't there. A loaded gun in the drawer only helps the crook when you're away. Why? In at least one case the kids involved were unable to steal a gun from one of the kid's grandfathers - but did get a gun from the kid's father. The difference was granddad had a gun safe.

2) All for bettering mental health but this would only catch a small percentage simply because it requires adult intervention to get the kid to the service. Some kids will ask and some adults will recognize the need without being asked - but a lot of the time the 'symptoms' are written off as 'teenage stuff' or 'he/she will grow out of it' so no one seriously intervenes until it's too late. Mental health only addresses part of the problem at best.

3) And that's because the other part is the school culture itself. We herd kids together in large warehouses, segregate them artificially by age and wonder why they end up acting like something from Lord of the Flies. Bullying is expected and accepted even when it's clearly excessive (it's always abusive). Even when not directly present, the 'pecking order' and social pressure cooker creates enormous stress on kids at a time when they are least able to deal with it.

4) Which brings us to yet another issue - the greater culture has changed and no longer provides the external support and framework kids need. It's wrong to hurt people - which seems obvious but the culture spends a great deal of time in media (including video games) glorifying the opposite. You can't do something for hours on end, day after day and have it not affect you. If 30 second commercials can alter behavior - and Madison Avenue spends vast sums on them for precisely that - then video games, played almost endlessly, can and will alter behavior. The idea of shooting up the school becomes more palatable after a few months of shooting up everything else. They aren't the cause - but they very much are part of the problem.

5) School administrations: Stop enacting idiotic policies and start keeping these kids from tearing each other apart on a daily basis. Yeah, no one thinks it's easy - but you're collecting a salary to take care of these kids so get it done. (To be fair, having been bullied myself, I've no sympathy for teachers/admins because so many just turned a blind eye.) Can't do it? Time to restructure so that it can be done - even if that means no more giant kid warehouses. (I did mention that I'm not sympathetic...)

6) Society: It's time we rethink the direction we're letting our culture take and the way we educate our kids. Schools need to be about education, not the Friday Night football game, school pride or 'tradition'. There's no longer a need to make ever bigger schools - with the Internet you don't need a chemistry teacher in every school. It's past time we stop making out kids into little adults way too early and stop cramming them into massive groups.

7) And so on - there's no way to cover all the related issues. Deal with them as we recognize them.

[seanD]

Improving the mental health system seems to be a bipartisan solution. How does that mesh with conservative opposition to government health programs?

It meshes well because of US government's proven incompetency with such large scale endeavors.

[DesertBerean]

There is right now a lock down of 7 schools in Tustin...which I assume is in the Los Angeles area...While police search for a reported.gunman said to be brandishing a sawed off shotgun.

[Teallaura]

[DesertBerean]

Dang....This guy really ticked somebody off. They have at least one chopper landing on the streets and all kinds of cops - deputies as well as city, apparently- swarming over blocks. Large area locked down.

Um...you were saying....yes well I don't think they would do this if there wasn't a person attached to that alleged gun...

[DesertBerean]

They've arrested the suspect. Apparently there was an officer involved shooting with that sawed off shotgun..not much details... but now they can't locate the gun. Yep.