That's a toughie. But I don't think kids are as attention-craved as people make us out to be. When a kid rebels by doing something like that, it's usually as revenge towards someone else. I don't think they do it for attention. Maybe it's just me, but violence isn't near as much of a problem as drugs are where I live. There's never been a shooting at my school, or anywhere near, but then again I don't live in a big city anymore. Good topic, Megan!

Taber, Alberta is not a big city it is less than a one horse town and they had a shooting in the school. This shooting happened a week or two after the shootings in the US. So, I think it might have been a copycat idea.

It is very sad that my parents had to hide under their desks at school because of practise bomb raids, I grew up in a time of peace when prayer was in the schools and no practice bomb raids, and now we have bomb raids again and intruder alert. It is because the athiests took prayer out of the schools. When I went to school everyone prayed, went to Sunday School, and had religion classes in school. That was when we had a time of peace. As soon as God got kicked out peace went with Him.

Yes, the media makes a big deal out of most school shootings. The 1 in 7 (or so) you do not hear about are females shooting males: Which is a VERY unpopular topic and so left out. Even my daring to type this sentence will get a LOT of people's knickers in a knot and create a lot of fury, which shows my point.

Some people will copycat other's violence.
Some people are severely unhinged.
Some bullying victims strike back.

The media will make a big deal out of anything which gets them viewers and/or readers. They will try to explain using their favorite "experts" who may or may not know what they are talking about.

So? What to do?

I think we're living in a culture of fear. Fear, being what it is, tends to feed itself. Fear grows. The best option, I think, is to stifle the fear. Report the shootings and nothing more, no analysis, no on site coverage, nothing more than "this happened."

We should also teach people a lot more about the big killers. Accidents for instance. Most accidents are no more accidents than road kill is dinner. Accidents are preventable and are a MAJOR cause of death, especially for males. The number of males we lose to accidental death every year is more than enough to pay off the National Debt in a few years if they were alive and working.

Those two things, I think, would act to stifle the fear, putting a lid on the fire as it were.

I don't agree with you, Serena, when you say that when prayer was taken out of school so was the peace. I don't think religion plays a big part of it at all (this coming from an atheist). I thinks it's partly the pressure kids put on each other, the pressures school puts on them, and the pressures their home life puts on them.

Of course not all teenagers are crazy serial killers, but there is the small handful that will do anything to get themselves noticed.

Megan said, "Of course, not all teenagers are crazy serial killers."

Sorry but...excuse me? That sounds like you're saying that the majority of teenags are crazy serial killers. I'm proud to say that I do not know one single teenager who has attempted murder on someone else. I do know teens who have gotten into fist fights, but it was never for attention. Sorry, but I have to disagree with you guys on this one. I'm so tired of stereotypes...especially on teenagers. We're not as "bad" as everyone thinks we are.

I don't think you finished reading the sentence.

Also, just because you don't know anyone who has attempted to kill someone doesn't mean that there aren't people like that. Unless, of course, you know everyone on the planet. I'm not stereotyping when I try to make my point, I'm a teenager as well. I'm just trying to say that I think that there are kids who will go to extremes to get what they want.