Handsome Hubby was mentioning something about that the other day. He came from a small-medium size town in Idaho and remembers getting warnings from cops for things that would get kids cuffed and hauled into the cop shop these days. He wasn't one to push the boundaries. Getting caught scared him straight - he only has to be warned once (OK - there was a twice one time and his parents heard about it).

A few years ago my brother gave my sister's boy a small pocket knife (he was 12 years old) for Christmas. He took it to school to show his friends. They caught it. He was expelled for 2 weeks and sent to a different school that had a program for delinquent kids. It could have been confiscated and he had some kind of punnishment like such things have been in the past. The kid had never been in trouble once in his whole school career and my sister and her husband were strong members of the parent-teacher program. The only thing that mattered in this instance was the 'zero tolerance' policy.

The shootings that happen in schools are violent and tragic and possibly preventable but what about the millions of deaths due to teen drinking, driving, and sheer stupidity? Aren't they as important? How many millions of school kids go to school absolutely safe and miserable in the way every teen is supposed to? Isn't that important? (rant over)