>Short version: Violence bad,

I don't really disagree with anything you said, but I'm going to take this opportunity to offer a somewhat controversial position to spur conversation:

Violence isn't necessarily bad. Sometimes it's even a good solution to a problem, though usually that kind of problem is admittedly in response to someone else's use of violence.

Sure, no one wants a killing spree in the mall. That degree of violence is bad.

Competition is in some sense a quality inherent to all creatures. To some degree society is built around channeling that drive to more constructive pursuits, and up to a point, it works. What you can't do is to try to surpress or deny that drive -- the attempt will either be ineffective, or the drive will still come out in weird ways. For an analogy, consider how effective it is to tell teenagers and priests to practice abstinence.

I think back to when I was in grade school. Boys got in fights with each other now and again -- your stereotypical playground brawls or fistfight after school on the hill -- but grudges didn't last a long time and people mostly got along without ostracizing anyone.

In subcultures where that kind of mild violence is forbidden, people still fight in their ways, but it's with social cruelty or some other device instead of fists, and I'm not sure these methods inflict less lasting harm or don't encourage ultimately larger violence.

I think you want to teach kids that guns aren't the way to solve most problems, but I don't think you can successfully teach them that violence is never the way. It's just too anathema to the nature of the human animal.