Asia-Pacific
RUSSIA
Kids Killing Kids
There have been no massacres in Russian schools comparable with the shootings that have plagued the U.S. in recent years. But outside school, the number of murders committed by teenagers has jumped by as much as 500 percent in Moscow alone over the past decade, reports Marina Latysheva in Moscow's liberal Sevodnya.
An expert on juvenile aggression, psychologist Sergei Yenikolopov, told Latysheva that Russian schools have been spared mass shootings because many Russian youngsters drop out and commit violent crimes in the streets. And while firearms have become more accessible in Russia, they are still not as easy to get as they are in the U.S.
Noting "children are not born nice," Yenikolopov says, "We have time to stave off this habit .... Do we really have to follow the Americans' example, where police appeared in the schools when it was already too late?"
