First, they lost their children. Then the conspiracy theories started. Now, the parents of Newtown are fighting back.

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.

Due to recent brain development research, educators are working to add more math education into pre-school and kindergarten classes. Studies show that children of this age are actually extremely receptive to numbers and learning geometry.

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.

Preschoolers in the U.S. who misbehave are increasingly being expelled. In Connecticut, trained counselors educated teachers about how to deal with emotionally traumatized kids which reduced expulsions.

Preparing the young for elementary education is a priority to nurture reading and social skills. For 16 years, Tulsa Oklahoma has instituted a state funded preschool, staffed with teachers trained in early education. Tulsa’s Pre-K initiative has shown that their children are more prepared for literacy skills and math; however, maintaining the positive results is a long-term challenge.

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.

Children who experience neglect, severe stress or sudden separation at a young age can be traumatized - without appropriate adult support, trauma can interfere with healthy brain development, inhibiting children’s ability to make good decisions, use memory or use sequential thought processes to work through problems. Head Start Trauma Smart helps support traumatized and neglected children from acting out.

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.

Universal preschool is a policy that is often hard to pass on voter referendums. But, as evidenced by examples in Detroit and New York, such an investment means that more children would do well in kindergarten, fewer would need special education or other extra help and down the line, fewer would drop out of high school, end up unemployed — or in jail.