Lahab Al-Samarrai
The growth of violence among children and adolescents has become a growing concern both in the United States and in Europe. Recent examples include the Columbine School shootings, 2008 shootings at Northern Illinois University in which a student gunman killed six and wounded 18, and a shooting in February 2009 by a teenage gunman in Frankfort, Germany that killed 15, the majority of which were girls and women and the horrific incident in Erfurt, Germany when a student shot seventeen teachers and classmates. The growth of violence among children and adolescents has reached crisis proportions as the incidence of student and teacher shootings has reached epidemic proportions. Stories of bomb threats, bullying, gang activity, harassment and shootings have populated the media.