[Teal]

While I see where you're coming from, things are never so clean cut. Since they banned handguns here in the UK (and didn't they introduce more stringent controls on other guns?), haven't gun-related crimes have marginally increased?

Violence is harder to stop than simply banning something that is a tool of it. Did anyone else used to get told that "you are the hope for the future" when at school? That you were what the future hinged on, you could and WOULD make the future a better place - and yet schools are one of the major breeding grounds for violence, as I see it. Now, I'm not saying children are violent, but I'm sure everyone has had some experience of how obnoxious their peers can be at school if you happen to be different. You're ostracised for such simple things as having ginger hair, or acne - that's completely aside from racial or sexual grounds for bullying. And they're usually only percieved "sexual" reasons, as well - like towards the young boy who has a best friend he likes to play computer games with; Up goes the cry of "oh, you spend so much time with him that you must be gay." (Yes, that happens - my brother got it. And from a teacher, of all people. When you're young as he was (I think he was 10 at the time), it's a very cruel stigma to be given.) Vocal torment often escalates into physical, and habits are always easy to get into, and not so easy to break...