They are sure enough cutworms.

The thing that you have to remember when talking about America when you are in another part of the world is, in America news is a very big business. While gun deaths are often reported widely and for days in reality gun homicides in the U.S. are somewhere between 2.75 and 3.5 per 100,000 people. While I agree that even one is too many, to say that Americans worry about getting shot is really more a bi-product of the sensationalist attention that gun crimes get in the media. An incredibly significant majority of people in America will go through their entire life without ever being near a violent crime (not including a fist fight between young people) and most of those involved in a violent crime will never see a gun used in a crime. Statistically in America, unless you are in a gang, then you are more likely to be shot by your brother, father, husband, kid, sister, wife or mother than you are by a robber. I have read the stat in a published peer reviewed academic paper that if anyone in your house buys a gun then you are 1.9 times more likely to die from a gun, which is telling. I agree that guns are a problem in America, but for us I am not sure that banning is a real possibility. Guns are part of our culture. Imagine banning alcohol in the UK, and you can start to get a sense of the relationship, healthy or not, that many Americans have with guns. There are solutions that can really help without banning. Knowing where the guns are and licensing owners would help, an ad valorem (property) tax on guns would go a long way to removing unregistered possessions and untraceable guns. I am not talking about restricting ownership just doing the same thing we do for cars and homes. The drawback is that registering is also the first very necessary step to ban guns, which leads to resistance.

I've thought so much about these comments since last night, but only now have time to respond. I think it is appalling for anyone to use the term "white" as the cause of these shootings. These are not white teens going to schools with large minority populations and shooting them. They are usually their own schools, filled with students just like themselves. This is NOT a racial issue! Lord knows we have enough of them, but this is NOT one of them. Leave it out of the discussion! I am absolutely in favor of stronger gun control laws, but that will only stop more guns being out there IN THE FUTURE. At this point in time, I see no possible way to legally remove the guns already out there, or legally make owning them illegal. We tried Prohibition with liquor; it was a failure. We required that all citizens turn in their gold - no private ownership of gold; that was a failure. Those that own guns are not going to hand them over, and the lawsuits would go on until the next millennium. This does NOT mean we should not try to stop further guns being out there and being so easily accessible. We should all be writing our Congressmen and telling them to vote agains the NRA-backed "permit to carry" being universal in all states. It's a HORRIBLE idea! What concerns me the most, is why is this happening. Why is it happening predominantly in the US? Please don't tell me it's because we elected Trump - most of these shootings started before he was even on The Apprentice. Dislike him if you will, but he is not the cause of school shootings. Yes, the availability of guns is a problem and must be addressed, but guns HAVE always been available in many, many areas. As someone above mentioned, they were even brought to school My husband taught in HS in rural Maine from 1993-2003, and the school parking lot was filled with pick-up trucks with gun racks, with rifles in the racks. So what IS different. I am aware that various studies have not always shown a connection between violent video games and acting out violence. But surely it does de-sensitize one to violence and that cannot possibly be good. We do know that more and more young children are being diagnosed with Obsessive Defiant Disorder. There may be some linkage to ADHD as well. While the causes are unknown, there is some powerful clues. There are Genetic influences. ODD tends to occur in families with a history of ADHD, substance abuse and other mental health issues. There are also Prenatal factors - mother's use of substances during pregnancy and other problems. Then there are Nuerobiological factors. We don't know what causes these. There are Social-cognitive factors - children responsible in inappropriate ways to many things. And there are Environmental factors, i.e. negative parenting practices. Poor parent-child attachment, dysfunctional family, inconsistent discipline, poor parental monitoring and modeling, neglect. While these may be often be found in areas of low socioeconomic status, it can (and does!) occur anywhere. Children with ODD are at far higher risk of moving on to a Conduct Disorder. Some develop this in early childhood; others in the teen years. The prognosis for such children is poor; Twenty-five to forty percent of children with CD will eventually reach a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder in adulthood. Those in juvenile detention facilities have a rate of 23% - 87% diagnosis of CD, and the adult prison population is filled with those who have APD. These are the children who are committing these school shootings. We know that the Columbine killers clearly had poor parental monitoring. How many children could have an arsenal in the garage or their bedroom and their parents be unaware of it? Really? The boy is FL and his brother were adopted. Their mother regularly called the police to "give them a talking to" as she found them difficult to handle. Did their birth mother(s) use substances during their pregnancies? Most likely. And her parenting was clearly inconsistent. We have a major breakdown of the family unit in this country. Not just in poor families (and it is horrible there), but even in middle/upper middle class families. I hear parents talking all the time, and I'm astounded at how indifferent many are to the needs of their children. EDUCATED parents talking this way. It's either "helicopter" or "neglect/indifference". Parents tend to think that once the child is in school, little supervision is needed; by the teen years, they get little. As one neighbor told me, "Once they get their car, they pretty much go and come as they please!" Really? Mine didn't. My grandchildren don't. They are still CHILDREN and need supervision! We will not solve the problem of school shootings until we IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM, and the problem is not just guns. We need to do some serious soul searching as to why our children are being so abysmally failed by so many parents today.

Shooter was killed. Two students were injured, one quite badly. She was the former girlfriend of the shooter.