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>I also see no real value, every time somebody gets shot, for the chief of police and the mayor to stand up and tell us that "This simply cannot be tolerated". They are stuck, and they don't want to admit it. It's easy to blame the situation on the U.S. and on poverty. Our mayor thinks that if he builds a few community centers, gangs will somehow just dissolve in the mist. Sure that's part of it. When I was a kid, there were lots of places to go for a game of pick-up football or baseball. Now everything is paved over and turned into shopping centers.
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>But there is still the problem of people wanting things but not wanting to have to work to earn them. And there is still the problem of peer pressure that lousy parents haven't taught their children to ignore. There was peer pressure when I was a kid too, but I didn't give a crap. What my folks thought of me was far more important to me than what some jerk at school thought of me, and I still had friends.
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Things were way way way different when we were kids, Alan.
- Nut cases were in hospitals so there was no worry about letting kids out in the neighbourhood;
- It wasn't necessary for both parents to work (and there was lots more BOTH parents those days);
- That meant that neighbourhood parents were on the lookout for trouble (I KNOW!!!);
- Kids didn't have all kinds of pay-as-you-play "activities" (really, baby-sitting) until a certain age, then poof... you're out there on your own;
- Kids didn't get everything they want by playing on the guilt of the working mom and dad;
- There was lots less to 'want', comparatively speaking. I remember my big thing was a transistor radio! And there weren't brands on cloths. And public schools had 'uniforms' too.

It's a different world and the kids are paying a heavy price. They haven't been socially acclimated like we were. There were no guns around when I was a kid, but if there had been I think I would have been infatuated by them and wanted one.