Kevin Pezzi, MD

WARNING! This article contains a shocking photo of a war crime victim that is not suitable for all readers. Viewer discretion is advised.

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”
— Plato

“Boys, especially, require strong, moral men in their lives – men who affirm their masculinity. American boys, however, are mired in an estrogen-infused, cloistered world where real men in authority are a threatened minority. … Adam Lanza was a product of a freewheeling, fatherless household. The tele-experts have been mum about a mother who was weak and ineffectual. Nancy Lanza was filled with fear. She used a menacing gun collection to overcompensate for her parental inadequacies. A strong, caring male might have taught the troubled Lanza to handle firearms responsibly, might have helped diffuse the lad's rage. A manifestly weak woman playing at make-believe manhood only added fuel to that fire.”

Notes:

1. June 4, 2021: Son About To Be Financially Cut Off By Parents Kills Them With Help From 'Lady Macbeth' Girlfriend
2. June 28, 2021: Former Detroit Police Chief Says There’s a Criminal Problem Not a Gun Problem
3. Mice prefer rules over fights
4. Researchers link childhood hunger, violence later in life
5. Should Doctors Be Involved in the Concealed-Weapons Permit Process? based on Assessing Competency for Concealed-Weapons Permits — The Physician's Role
6. After Newtown: A New Use for a Weapons-Detecting Radar?
7. Many Emergency Department Providers Don't Ask Suicidal Patients About Gun Access
8. Daytona Speedway crash injures driver, 28 fans and 2 killed as car slams into pit at California race
   Comment: It's time to ban auto racing! And cars! That ban could have prevented a man from later crashing his car into a Wal-Mart and then assaulting customers inside.
9. “A knife-wielding man [in Pittsburgh] being chased after a fight ran into a Target store … slashing two men and stabbing and seriously injuring a 16-year-old girl.”
   Comment: It's time to ban knives!
10. Former state trooper, wife killed in supermarket murder-suicide
    Comment: No guns for ex-police!
11. Many Americans want to believe that all mentally ill people can safely live on their own. Wrong.
12. What drugs was the Newtown shooter on? The precious psychotropic drugs America loves so much as band-aids on problems also cause them; they can change a peaceful person into a raging maniac. Blame the person, but don't exempt the drug. The USA is fighting a war on illegal drugs but not the legal ones that can loosen screws in surprising ways.
    
    
    
    However, it isn't just drugs that affect our minds; food does it, too. One of the great mysteries is why people think they can eat whatever they want and escape its consequences; food matters for farm animals and pets, but not them. Oh, but it does, affecting not just mood, but also sleep, intelligence, creativity, and empathy. I know myriad ways to boost intelligence, but tripling it remains a pipe dream. In contrast, tripling creativity is child's play; I know how to boost it into the stratosphere, dozens to hundreds of times above its baseline, using a verifiable criterion (the production of valuable new ideas), not nebulous and subjective interpretations of artistic merit.
    
    Ideas are the most valuable form of property. Ideas could kickstart an American recovery and send our economy into overdrive, but too many people know too little about nutrition and adjunctive tips that go way beyond it, transforming creativity in very surprising ways.
    
    Most Americans want to talk about sports or their favorite dysfunctional celebrity, not methods of boosting brainpower. Critical information is dismissed so fluff can remain in the limelight. Is it any wonder why America is failing?
13. If the government is going to pay people for not working, why not have them do something valuable, such as serve as school security guards? Shootings are infrequent but bullying is not. I was assaulted in class, shot, stabbed, kicked, almost suffocated, and beaten to a pulp when I was a kid, targeted by people who evidently hated me so much for my appearance that they felt entitled to do something about it; calling me “nigger nose,” “nigger lips,” “bucky,” and “Mr. Magoo” apparently wasn't enough to vent their rage.
    
    Teachers are often in la-la land, cluelessly blowing chances to nip problems in the bud and thus permitting them to snowball out of control. Realistically, even good teachers cannot be everywhere at once; they need more eyes and ears.
    
    I know where to find them, but the ones with the power to make them return something to the society that is supporting them think all the work they need to do is show up once every two years and vote for more freebies, even though there is a much better way for the recipients to get more while imposing less burden on taxpayers.
    
    However, the government that throws money at problems, ostensibly to solve them, wants to perpetuate poverty and dependency because they use that to control people and wage their war on freedom. I'm not against welfare; I'm against a solution to a problem that is exacerbating it.
14. As a physician, I have great empathy for mentally ill people, most of whom have less responsibility for their problems than many folks with physical diseases and conditions, which can often be traced to poor lifestyle choices: too much food, booze, drugs, or sitting around. I use disparaging terms such as “nutcase” to describe only the evil ones brimming with hate and malice, such as Adam Lanza. He must have known that his life would end the day of his rampage. He could have sought help, or taken his own life only, but he was such a monster that he thought he'd feel better by first slaughtering a bunch of innocent people. Ladies and gentlemen, that's a nutcase.
15. The day after the shooting, Fox News discussed the Newtown shooting as a “Black Swan” event. Their discussion made me think they were suggesting that because it is a Black Swan event, trying to prevent it is futile. Do they have any idea how logically inconsistent they are? Fox News is the #1 fan of our military efforts to spend trillions of dollars trying to prevent another 9-11 attack.
    
    On June 29, 2011, Time published an article (The $5 Trillion War on Terror) that bolsters my belief that the U.S. military is doing a better job of digging our economic grave than they are protecting us. What is their goal? Bankrupting us? If so, they are doing a superb job.
    
    If the goal were saving lives, we could save many more lives by better protecting people in the United States. In 2010, 14,748 people were murdered in the USA. In the years since 9-11, American homicide victims total about SIXTY 9-11 attacks in addition to about 15 million victims of violent crimes. Money doesn't grow on trees, so it is sheer insanity to spend trillions of dollars trying to prevent another 9-11 when many times that number of Americans are being killed, raped, robbed, assaulted, and otherwise terrorized by criminals in the USA.
    
    Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health “estimate that excess dietary salt led to 2.3 million deaths from CVD worldwide and about one in 10 deaths from CVD in the US.” The primary source of sodium is processed and restaurant foods, so if the #1 goal were saving lives, our Armed Forces are targeting the wrong enemy. Unlike sugar, children have no natural craving for salt, so how do processed food companies hook kids on it? By intentionally adding salt to toddlers' foods. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly three-quarters of the 1115 ready-to-eat toddlers' meals tested were high in salt.
    
    Salt: The Forgotten Killer … and FDA's Failure to Protect the Public's Health, published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that “reducing sodium consumption by half would save an estimated 150,000 lives per year [and … ] reduce medical care and other costs by roughly $1.5 trillion over 20 years.”
    
    If the goal were saving lives, by banning sugar-sweetened beverages, we could save 25,000 people—that's the number of Americans killed by them per year, according to Harvard researchers. Why don't we ban them? Why do we let people consume them and kill themselves? Why do we allow parents to give them to children? Why do we permit restaurants to kill some of their customers by serving them? Freedom.
    
    Freedom means having the freedom to do what you wish. Some folks desire to eat only healthy food, while others prefer tasty junk even if that sends them, their kids, or their customers to an early grave. Some people make great use of their time, while others fritter their lives away. Freedom has many positive consequences but negative ones, too. Freedom will always be that way until people are magically perfect. The negatives ones cannot be eliminated without eliminating freedom.
    
    Article: School Shootings Garner Headlines, but Bullying, Hate Crimes and Drug Use More Common
    
    Focal tragedies galvanize America's attention, but not diffuse ones of much greater magnitude. When two dozen people die in a shooting or a few thousand die in a terrorist attack, Americans really, really, really care. But if 10,000 more die year after year from scattered crimes or millions die from processed food, Americans don't even bother yawning.
    
    This is logically inconsistent if not crazy. The best definition of the latter is not tuned into reality, and Americans of late are masters of burying their heads in the sand and ignoring reality, not squarely facing it and obvious truths. Intelligently dealing with reality is adaptive; dismissing it is not, no matter how clever the dodge or the eloquence of the excuse.
    
    Focal tragedies are so easy to focus on that even people of limited intelligence can do it, while diffuse tragedies require more mental horsepower to process.
16. ‘Unconstitutional Laws Aren't Laws’: Marine Who Penned Blistering Letter to Sen. Feinstein Over Gun Control Speaks Out (here's his letter)
    Comment: He raises an excellent point that reminds me of the recent case in which a California court said a man was not guilty of rape because the victim was not married at the time of the assault. Beyond kooky.
17. Marine hero General Smedley Butler eventually realized that he had spent most of his time “being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it.” Butler is the author of War is a Racket. He believed that government fabricates excuses for us to go to war because big wars are great for big business and big government. And they are.
    
    If you consider the number of U.S. military personnel killed and injured, and the number of innocent people they killed around the world, it makes no sense for an isolated 9-11 event to trigger a response that kills considerably more people and is financially devastating our nation. If we had several 9-11 attacks per year every year, then it might make sense to fight the War on Terror as we are (note that I am not opposed to fighting it; I am opposed to the idiotic, horrendously expensive way we're doing it). Until that very unlikely day comes, if the U.S. government were truly serious about protecting people, they'd spend that money at home and get much better bang for the buck.
    
    References:
    
    The cost of America's police state: Hundreds of billions have been spent to militarize our nation against a terrorism threat that barely exists
    
    7 absurd ways the military wastes taxpayer dollars: If you thought the Petraeus scandal was embarrassing, wait 'til you hear how much is spent on military golf courses
    
    The “War On Terror” Is A $6 Trillion Racket, With $1 Trillion In Interest Alone, Exceeding The Total Cost Of World War II
    
    Estimated cost of post-9/11 wars: 225,000 lives, up to $4 trillion

More Fox News ignorance: After listening to various Fox News hosts discuss guns after the Newtown massacre, it is obvious they know next to nothing about even Gun 101 basics. We're not talking about abstruse inner parts of a rocket engine, we're talking about guns—something every adult should know the basics of (even if they never used one) after watching them used countless times on television and in movies, reading about them in books, magazines, etc., and hearing others discuss them.

A few days later, after having plenty of time to educate themselves on a topic they know little about yet discuss as if they do, another big shot Fox News host sternly said that one of the big mysteries of this case is why a woman (the shooter's mother) would have such heavy-duty weapons.

First, that is no mystery; she enjoyed target shooting and used that activity in an attempt to bond with her son, perhaps thinking it would appeal more to him than, say, playing with dolls, baking cookies, or shopping. What IS a mystery is why she would have any weapons in a home with such an unstable person who required constant monitoring, as noted above. That manifests the mother's glaring lack of common sense. I have a constitutional right to have cookies, cakes, and pies in my home, but I simply do not possess enough willpower to use them responsibly. I learned that lesson the hard way, becoming so fat I could not see my feet when I stood up. I lost the blubber by giving up my constitutional right to have them. Problem solved. Self-Control 101.

People who favor restrictions on freedom to increase safety and solve problems may wish to consider restrictions on parenting. Adam Lanza's mother seemed to need a stat infusion of common sense, but so do many other irresponsible parents. I met thousands of them as an ER doctor. It is not politically correct to say it, but I will speak the truth anyway: Many people who have children are too stupid, ignorant, or irresponsible to be good parents.

I am not advocating government control of reproductive rights, but for folks who think the government can solve most problems with more legislation and control, here's your chance to impose control that would do some good. For starters, how about mandatory education in health and nutrition? I've had pediatric patients who obtained over half their calories from sugar in junk food and inhaled secondhand cigarette smoke every breath they took. Alarmingly, even highly educated, affluent people often make mistakes that damage their or their loved ones health, mood, intelligence, and appearance. I could write a thick book on that subject.

Second point: Heavy-duty? The Fox News host is likely unduly influenced by the military-like appearance of the rifle. I think such rifles are so ugly I won't buy them, but I have rifles that make that gun seem like a pea-shooter in comparison. However, gun appearance never killed anyone. Military rifles are fully automatic; Lanza's gun is semi-automatic, so it may be military style, but it is NOT a military weapon. Dressing up in an Army uniform doesn't make me a soldier.

The bullets used in this attack are much less powerful in terms of kinetic energy than bullets fired from most deer-hunting rifles. In fact, some states prohibit the use of .22 caliber (that includes .223) guns, including centerfire rifles, for deer hunting because the wound-to-kill ratio is too high. The .223 is primarily intended for varmint and target shooting. Sure, hunters can shoot a deer repeatedly and eventually kill it, but a slow lingering death is cruel. Adam Lanza may have sadistically chosen the .223 rifle he used for that reason (to make the victims suffer more before dying—they were all shot multiple times), but most likely he chose guns he had access to.

Most of my career in medicine was spent in emergency departments in Detroit and Flint when they were the Murder Capitals of America, so I've seen many people shot by a variety of weapons. Trust me: the .223 produces much less damage than many other bullets.

It is my personal opinion that military-style rifles make a few nutcases even crazier when they snap, but most owners of them are immune to that effect, which may or may not exist—that's just my speculation. However, if that effect exists, it must affect very few people because the U.S. homicide rate fell substantially after the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired on September 13, 2004. Proponents of enacting a similar ban are now giddy with the prospect of what it may do to protect us, but it is a band-aid fix at best, not a real solution to a real problem.

So I'd like to know: Do these Fox News hosts insulate themselves from knowledgeable people or reputable sources of information? If they can be so shockingly ignorant about guns, might they discuss other topics they know little about? Yes, so I have some advice for them: spend less time admiring your reflection in the mirror, or counting the piles of money you earn, and get what's called an education, including real-world education.

When I think of Fox News hosts, I think of the song Wonderful World, a.k.a., (What a) Wonderful World:

And what a wonderful world it would be if those silver-tongued idiots knew what they were talking about!

More notes:

1. Connection Between Narcissism and Envy Explained
   Comment: Another clue to understanding what goes on in the minds of shooters.
2. Primary Care Physicians Missing Early Signs of Serious Mental Illness
3. Man-made chemicals cited in health scourges: UN report
   Excerpt: “Man-made chemicals in everyday products are likely to be at least the partial cause of a global surge in birth deformities, hormonal cancers and psychiatric diseases, a U.N.-sponsored research team reported on Tuesday.”
   Comment: I've written about that topic for decades.
4. Neighborhood's quality influences children's behaviors through teens, study suggests
5. An essay by the mother of a mentally ill son who terrifies her. Will he be the next Adam Lanza? She wrote, “I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am James Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.”
6. Gun Control: Focus On Manufacturers, Not Just Buyers, Study Shows
   Excerpt: “We found that 1 percent of gun dealers are responsible for 45 to 60 percent of guns involved in crimes. These dealers divert new guns intended for responsible owners to those that gun restrictions are meant to keep away from the weapons.”
7. Firearms-makers to politicians on gun rights: You balk, we walk (“Firearms companies ranging from gun shops to machinists are joining forces to oppose new gun control laws. Some are threatening to move away from states that crack down on guns, others are refusing to sell gear to police that can't be sold to citizens.”)
8. Bulletproof whiteboard created to protect teachers and students from shooters
   Comment: Nice try, but it offers insufficient protection. Want something better that almost all kids already have? Two legs. Kids usually freeze in fear but could be taught to run like hell and dart in unpredictable directions. As any rabbit hunter can tell you, hitting a moving target isn't easy. Children could also be taught to do something else while they're moving around that would be a nightmare for shooters. Can you guess what it is?
9. Greenery in Neighborhoods May Reduce Adolescent Aggressive Behavior
10. If you think that people who become police are the only ones who should have guns, consider Christopher Dorner, the ex-cop from Los Angeles who went on a shooting rampage after “posting a manifesto on Facebook outlining plans to kill the families of those he felt wronged him,” motivated by a desire to clear his name—as if bullets could ever do that!
    
    The ultimate irony: he “wants stricter laws for assault weapons.” He is handsome with a Hollywood smile, but twisted. A former girlfriend “described him as "severely emotionally and mentally disturbed" … and "super paranoid." She claims that Dorner hated himself for being black and at one point asked her to act more like a white woman.” How's that? A subsequent marriage “really only last[ed] 'eight hours.'”
    
    A related article: LAPD to reopen probe into fugitive ex-cop's firing
    Comment: Never trust organizations or corporations who claim they'll investigate themselves. For example, after eating cheese that made me very sick for a week, its manufacturer found nothing wrong with it. Sure. And mothers of criminals still think they're lovable …
    
    Don't expect objectivity when there is emotional or financial attachment, or plain ol' CYA. Dorner is clearly a nut, because only a nut would kill innocent people to clear his name, but his allegations against the LAPD may have merit. Or may not. We'll likely never know for sure if they investigate themselves.
    
    I once assumed that racism had almost vanished in the United States, but in retrospect that was me projecting my feelings onto others, many of whom do indeed harbor burning feelings of racial animosity. Our stupid culture excels in papering over problems and sweeping them under the rug, not solving them. Negative racial attitudes are still very prevalent, but our culture trains people to pretend they are not racist.
    
    People profess to care about eradicating racism, but most don't give a hoot. If they did, the article I posted years ago about healthcare personnel intentionally killing patients because they are black would have caused a national uproar, but of the many thousands of messages I've received from readers, I cannot recall a single comment on that. I even reported it to the NAACP and never heard back from them. I think most people and organizations care about racism when there is some political or financial angle to it, but otherwise Dancing With the Stars is more important to them. Pathetic.
    
    After we sweep the racism problem under the rug, we paper over our national financial problems to temporarily hide the economic cancer that will almost surely destroy the United States. Then we bury our heads in the sand about how our lackluster educational system produces intellectually lazy people who prefer Twitter-length simple comments about topics that are usually inane.
    
    Think about it: I know my readership includes journalists, even far-Left journalists, all of whom should care about righting wrongs (and winning a Pulitzer Prize). Yet none of them evidently care about healthcare workers killing black patients, but some “journalists” care about what I call evil monsters who deserve to be hated. It's not that I don't have hate, but mine is well-directed against people who richly deserve it, such as businessmen who intentionally poison their customers or war criminals who rape children and grandmothers before killing and sometimes sexually mutilating them, as in this example:
    
    Few people care about this victim (from the Nanjing Massacre in China) and others like her because they are Chinese, but if American infants and grandmothers were gang-raped and slaughtered after being speared in the vagina or gut, we'd never hear the end of it!
    
    We will never forget the Nazi Holocaust of Jews during World War II (nor should we), but we don't have even a name for the more numerous—and arguably even worse—crimes I documented in articles on Japanese war crimes and Hirohito: the war criminal who got off scot-free. If an impartial person analyzed this, he might conclude that the lack of outrage stems from a racist devaluation of people with more melanin in their skin, or thinking less of folks who otherwise look different.
    
    

    Research

    (1) Babies Prefer Individuals Who Harm Those That Aren't Like Them based on Not Like Me = Bad: Infants Prefer Those Who Harm Dissimilar Others
    
    (2) Proof: Babies can be jerks
    
    (3) Study Shows Trustworthy People Perceived to Look Similar to Ourselves
    Comment: Obvious implications to xenophobia.
    Xenophobia is part of our genetic heritage. It once served us well in earlier times during human evolution, which is why it persisted, but the genes predisposing us to xenophobia are still in us. We can deal with that fact intelligently, or we can sweep it under the rug, as we are doing—and as the LAPD is probably doing. (Are their genes really any different?) We're taught that it's not nice to use the N-word, but almost no one is ever given the quick lesson that would erase racial antipathy from within. If we were, I wouldn't have bothered to write a book on rapidly overcoming racism, but there is clearly a need for it.
    
    In the years I've spent researching and writing that book, I thought about how learning that lesson would help so many problems, including racism, crime, road rage, divorce, kids squabbling and fighting, bullying, hatred of others with opposing political opinions, gender discrimination, equal pay, classism, animal abuse and trivialization, manufacturers producing shoddy products, snowmobilers driving way too fast on trails, and on and on. The solution is surprisingly simple, quick, and easy, yet most people I know with advanced degrees don't know it! Even our Harvard-educated President who would love to stomp out racism and those other problems doesn't know how to do it!
11. Understanding the Motivations of Mass Shooters Is Key to Successful Law Enforcement Strategies based on Mass Shooters in the USA, 1966–2010: Differences Between Attackers Who Live and Die
12. When red evokes mischief
13. Tool Developed to Predict Violence and Aggression in Children and Teens
14. Psychiatric assessments for predicting violence are ineffective: “Standard approaches for investigating risk of violence in psychiatric patients and prisoners are inaccurate …”
    Comment: Then use a nonstandard approach, as I did working in the ER.
15. Social Media Cheers For Anti-Hero Christopher Dorner
16. Assault Weapons: Facts vs. Fiction
17. Sheriffs, state lawmakers push back on gun control
18. Sheriff says he won't enforce President's plan
19. Antisocial Behavior May Be Caused By Low Stress Hormone Levels
20. Oxytocin Produces More Engaged Fathers and More Responsive Infants
    Comment: And fewer school shootings?
21. Heavy Criticism from a Parent Can Increase Aggressive Behavior in Children and Mothers and OCD Children Trapped in Rituals Have Impaired Relationships, both based on How and why children change in aggression and delinquency from childhood to adolescence: moderation of overreactive parenting by child personality
22. Psychiatrist who treated accused Colorado gunman sued over rampage
23. Taking Steps to Prevent 'Going Postal' based on Workplace Violence: Assessing Organizational Awareness and Planning Interventions
24. Seeing and Experiencing Violence Makes Aggression 'Normal' for Children based on Monkey See, Monkey Do, Monkey Hurt: Longitudinal Effects of Exposure to Violence on Children’s Aggressive Behavior
25. Eating Sweets Every Day In Childhood 'Increases Adult Aggression' based on Confectionary consumption in childhood and adult violence
26. Excessive TV in Childhood Linked to Long-Term Antisocial Behavior, New Zealand Study Shows
27. Seeing Happiness in Ambiguous Facial Expressions Reduces Aggressive Behavior based on Increasing Recognition of Happiness in Ambiguous Facial Expressions Reduces Anger and Aggressive Behavior
28. Parents' Behavior Linked to Kids' Videogame Playing
29. Violent Video Games Increase Aggression Long After the Game Is Turned Off, Study Finds
30. Violent Video Games: More Playing Time Equals More Aggression
31. Life lessons: Children learn aggressive ways of thinking and behaving from violent video games, study finds
32. Video Games Boost Visual Attention but Reduce Impulse Control
33. Violent Video Games Reduce Brain Response to Violence and Increase Aggressive Behavior, Study Suggests
34. Violent Video Game Feed Aggression In Kids In Japan And U.S.
35. Children and Teens With Autism More Likely to Become Preoccupied With Video Games
36. Teens Eat More, Cheat More After Playing Violent Video Games
    Comment: Child pornography is banned because seeing tempts some people into doing, so why not also ban violent video games?
37. Mass. principal suspended 2 days for violent video
38. Teaching Teens That People Can Change Reduces Aggression in School based on Implicit Theories of Personality and Attributions of Hostile Intent: A Meta-Analysis, an Experiment, and a Longitudinal Intervention
39. Study Links Internet Addiction To Aggression In Teens
40. Media Violence Cited As 'Critical Risk Factor' For Aggression
41. Media Violence Consumption Increases the Relative Risk of Aggression, Analysis Shows
    Comment: Imagine a world without violence. If younger generations never witnessed violence, they surely would be less apt to be violent themselves.
42. Mass killings, school shootings are contagious
43. Book: Who Killed Detroit?: Other Cities Beware!
44. Coach shoots teen during robbery near Mich. school
45. In response to an article reporting the charred human remains believed to be those of Christopher Dorner, Devon insightfully commented:
    
    
    I disagree that Dorner was dangerous to police only (because he killed two others), but Devon and other commenters raised some good points. Dorner's death makes it easier for the LAPD to evade his allegations of persistent racism, so it may not be surprising that he died before a trial could have given him opportunities to substantiate his allegations. On the other hand, Dorner could have ensured his safety and opportunity to speak by giving himself up instead of fighting to the end and killing another person.
46. RAND Corporation: First estimates of judicial costs of crime, from homicide to theft
47. Jeffrey Goldberg: The Second Amendment Might Need Some Revisions
48. Australian tourist raped in NYC after leaving cab
    Excerpt: “That's pretty shocking because this is a well maintained neighborhood and incidents of that nature don't usually happen …”
    Comment: If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. If the police can't always protect you (and they cannot), who will? Smith and Wesson.
49. Teen Girls Who Exercise Are Less Likely to Be Violent
50. Men are more violent when there are more women around
51. The kids are alright – if you leave them alone: Has raising children turned into stressful, obsessive work in the hands of middle-class Western parents? Two new books explore this troubled territory
    Comment: Americans put freedom on a pedestal but often don't give it to their children, instead forcing them to conform to societal expectations of how they should look and behave; what they should say and when they should say it. They call it parenting; I call it stultifying. Fitting into molds engineered by control freaks is a recipe for becoming one, not an independent free-thinker, which is the source of valuable ideas. I explored this concept in Control freaks, creativity, and your career and Self-censoring is bad for your career and the economy.
52. Psychosocial factors, psychological disorders and violent crime