People keep saying this, and it's just not true. Sure, there are stories in the press, but the actual lived reality of kids in the US is not that.
You can easily tell I'm right simply because it's in the News: The News doesn't cover the normal situation, they cover the unusual. If it's in the news, it's something that rarely happens.
>>ars+(OP)
To support your point, the news in the US has become far more sensationalized then what I remember growing up. In the mid aughts when I was in college, my buddy (a journalism major) told me even in their college news room they had adopted the famous adage, "If it bleeds, it leads" as their motto on what gets reported.