I will operate from the assumption that your post, Patty O'dawes, is a legitimate one. The connection between young folks acting out in a violent ways, and labor laws and social safety nets, is fairly obvious to me. Neighborhoods decline, education levels decline, crime increases in direct relation to the economic health of the area. When good jobs are available, when social safety nets (such as Headstart here in the US, hot meal programs, after school programs, education programs for disadvantaged) are in place, the youth of the area don't feel the hopelessness. Families are more stable. To be sure there is much more involved, and I don't discount your contention with regard to young people acting out. But those things aren't new, young folks have always acted out. And the fact that they are doing so in a violent way has always been the case as well. It occurs when the gap between the richest and the rest widens, and money centralizes in fewer hands.

I believe that gun crime is a component of a larger issue of violent crime. Guns, in the hands of responsible people are not responsible for the rise in gun deaths.

Mick