Punch out game for fun, how did parts of the US come to this?

disclaimer This is not an indictment that all inner city youths are vicious, that it happens in many US cities, or that only ethnic or African American youth are the cause.

So, you have bored young people assaulting innocent bystanders, slugging them with no regard how they land or how they might be injured. How did it come to this that slugging someone with the intent of rendering them unconscious became exciting? I hate to have to say it, but I find it true from my childhood, that this behavior would not have stood when I was a boy. Once it got out on the grapevine or in the news, the parents would have been all over it and any one of us kids caught doing it, would have reaped the whirl wind. To stem the growth of it, since the ship has already sailed, should those caught doing it be severely punished, punished not so harsh but for a greater length of time? If the parents were made to be liable for some of the crime in these types of incidents that their children do, would they get more involved to nip it in the bud at home? Allowing more people to pack heat to protect themselves against this and other crimes which might be committed by bored teens? To do little or nothing is to embolden other because they feel the excitement out weights the punishment.