'We Are Going To Survive': Douglas Students Use Music, Art To Heal At Camp Shine

Hawaii is one of the states with strongest gun laws and lowest gun death rates. A study found that states with stricter gun control laws, ammo regulation, background checks, and reporting of lost firearms had the lowest injury rates.

The U.S. continues to experience mass shootings, and many Americans deny that tightening gun laws will help. However, countries like Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Norway have reduced gun violence through stricter regulations.

Colombia has attempted to decrease murder and homicide rates by setting up curfews for teenagers, forcing bars to close earlier in the evening, and creating gun laws to prevent the carrying of weapons. As a result of this epidemiological, data-driven approach, along with other governmental factors, the homicide rate has decreased significantly in most of the cities in which it was implemented.

The city of Trenton is trying to reduce gun violence. In Philadelphia, the Healing Hurt People is a hospital-based violence intervention program that employs trauma counselors to help patients suffering from gun violence.

Richmond, California ranked among the highest homicide rates in the country. The city created the Office of Neighborhood Safety to engage the community in the effort to curb gun violence and prevent homicides. ONS works directly with the young people who are at risk and have succeeded in reducing the homicide rate.

Little Kids Rock has helped to revitalize and broaden music education in more than a thousand schools by encouraging children to learn to play popular music, form bands and compose their own songs. Despite a backlash from traditionalists, teaching children to play music they love doesn’t “dumb down” music education—it enriches it.

A program in Philadelphia is pioneering new ways to treat the urban wounded. By seeing it as PTSD, and not pointing fingers, the city is using mental health tools to decrease violence and heal communities.

In Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood, an organization called Save Our Streets Crown Heights (S.O.S.) is taking steps to disrupt violence. The organization is modeled after Chicago's violence interrupters, which employ people from the neighborhood to connect with those most at-risk and disrupt conflicts and retalitory violence.

Why do schools teach music in a way that turns off so many young people rather than igniting their imagination? A program that taps into students’ passion for pop and rock is revitalizing music education in many schools.

Game inventors have created a new game to help students who suffer from ADHD and other mental problems develop and stimulate their brains in a safer, more targeted way than normal medicines.