School Shooting Victims
 

Here is how it goes;

Kid goes to school, is tormented and abused and treated like nothing but scum, he is emotionally shattered and destroyed

One day they go to far, and he loses it, he has taken enough of their abuse and will take no more of it, he goes home and slips a weapon in his backpack. He knows deep down his intent but he doesnt care anymore.

The next day, he either A) attacks and injurs/kills someone or B) gets caught and is charged with attempting the crime

All of a sudden there is a huge springout about his VICTIMS... HIS victims... a boy took a BB gun to school where I live and all they could talk about were HIS victims (I would never read a newspaper in this city even if my life depended on it) and not one person mentioned what he went through, not one perrson mentioned that he WAS a victim.

Abuse is welcome in schools, there are all these rules saying picking on someone will get you in trouble but no one enforces it, people are tormented and then one day fight back, and its a media hayday about his VICTIMS...

This is NOT a random act of someone killing someone for their shoes or because they dont like how they look or anything, this is people who are fighting back, while violence is never the answer they are always treated as if they had NO reason for doing this.

I do not care if people do not agree, I am not here to be agreed with, I am curious though how many of you truly believe that the bully is the true innocent, it is his target that is the guilty party.

I think both the bully and the teachers are guilty. As a person who was tormented through lower school, I can tell you, those teachers don't think about what you go through for one second. Only one principal ever sided with me. Nice guy, too. Trust me, the kid is innocent. Furthermore, if he used a fucking BB gun, then where's the harm? BB guns can only bruise the kids, or hurt them badly in the eye (god, i shudder to think of a hit there) or, elsewhere...

Honestly, even if he murdered them, the whole thing would have been avoided if the teachers had stepped in every now and them. Sometimes just thinking someone is on your side is enough. And, no, I doubt just saying that you're on their side is enough. ACTIONS are what matter. Not words. A teacher can tell me he'll "look into it" a million times, but how dows that help me?

And, if I was a jounalist, I'd try to find out WHY the crime happened, and finding out what happened (kid is harrased every day or his freaking life) denounce it as justifyable murder, blaming the teachers for staying out, and the kids who got killed for being little bastards. I don't care if I get persecuted by a million mommies.

I can't say that in my weaker moments I HAVEN'T contemplated bringing a nice ole' shotgun to school and blowing a few pricks away, but with a complete lack of firearms, the pleasent mid-day fantasy kinda ended there.

That's one of the problems with an ultra-right society (Not saying right-wingers are bad). It's easier to just pick off one person for a huge offense than slap a few people on the wrists for misdemeanors/summary offenses. "Oh boys will just be boys. Ah, it's almost comical watching the- HOLY SHIT AN EIGHT YEAR OLD HAS A GUN! IT'S THE WORST THREAT AMERICA HAS EVER SEEN!!!111"

Another problem with trying to prosecute bullies after a foiled gun incident is self-defense laws. You're allowed to start the conflict (i.e. bully), and use a self-defense defense if the level of violence escallates outside of the bully's control (i.e. a knife or gun gets involved). Granted, that defense doesn't work when it's a last resort and imminent DEATH is feared, but oh well.

The reason though that we don't have a noble hoard of journalists with Gorefiend's thinking though, is that campaigning for the little troubled kid with a gun is that it does just that, produce a million angry mommies, so it scares most people away from wanting to defend the poor little guy.

I'm not pro-school shooting, I'm all for a peaceful mediation/transfer/etc, but YOU try telling a tortured kid that there's nobody left to help him.

I understand completely the motivations of a school shooter, I went throught middle- and high-school too, but let me tell you something, taking a gun to school and shooting people is fucking stupid.

Not only are you unlikely to find and kill the people who actually tormented you, but it's the wrong solution. You stoop to the level of your tormentors, make yourself worse than they are.

If those kids would just stick with it, just hang on till the end of school, it would be okay. They would emerge better, stronger people and probably go on to lead happy, succesful lives.

But instead they admitted their weakness and allowed themselves to do something completely stupid.

I also apologize to the people I'm going to offend.

Personally, I believe 'school' is a horrible institution. Don't misunderstand me, education is very important and necessary, there is just a better way to go about acquiring it then being forced to endure the politics of the school system.

School is the apotheosis of society. The top ten percent (popular people) live in absolute bliss, while the bottom ten ("un-cool" people) have to endure a living hell. And then, in the middle, we have the average kids just trying to do what's required and go home.

Why do 90% of kids have to endure a system that pisses on them regularly? School itself is a pox, it sucks the innocence out of kids and replaces it with hate and cynicism. I don't know about the rest of the posters here, but personally, I didn't know a single curse word before I went to school.

School itself is the top reason (in my opinion, of course) why a kid goes wacky and blows the brain out of a girl that refused to blow him. That's just one reason of course, the sexual reason, purely basic and instinctual. In the school I attended, we have a very small black population, who were insulted regularly by people who claimed to be "just kidding." The result was two of those black kids ended up raping a girl who insulted them. Were they born bad or was school the catalyst?

Killing anyone is, of course, wrong, and I am both strongly against murder and the death penalty. However, I understand what can lead kids to kill there peers. How many of us didn't want to kill the school bully? The kids that are written about actually did it. Now granted, that is a very vague statement since most of the shooters just gun down random children, just aiming to cause destruction; the kill the bully comment was meant as an example of a driving force.

To acquire education, a common and basic right in America, why do kids have to put up with all the negatives? A child just wanting to do well in class, go off to college and make a good life for themselves must endure of the most atrocious barbarism at it's most basic level. Children are cruel.

It's a common statement that once you go up the rungs of the school system, the assholes get weeded out, but by then it's too late, once those assholes already contaminate other children while they are most impressionable.

Meh...I side more with Illuminatus here.

Everyone, at one point or another, was made fun of in school. Everyone. I don't care who you are, someone at some point was made fun of. Me, it was 7th grade, riding the bus to-and-from school. I was made fun of for being fat. It made me hate getting on the bus, know that those kids would be there to make fun of me.

Now, did that make me want to shoot them? I mean, to go beyond the fantasy of shutting them up and actually do them physical harm?

HECK NO.

Most rational human beings know where the line is. I remember a line from Cowboy Bebop, and I may be misquoting it, but it goes something along the line of "Nothing is a pure and cruel as a child." We all know what it means. Being made fun of is part of life. Who here can honestly say they never, never, made fun of anyone?

::waits to see if anyone raises their hand::

If anyone did raise their hand, I'm not going to out-right call you a liar, but I will suggest you think about it more. It is part of life, especially at that age. Does that make it okay? No. But it sure as heck doesn't justify going on a shooting-spree inside your school, on any level whatsoever.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Well, I wasnt JUST made fun of, I was hated... literally, me and my brother went through school with both of us having enemies (he was actually falsly accused of threatening to kill someone at school, after the media reemed our families name the girls who accused actually said they lied *one of their fathers wanted to kill them for that* but did the papers say that it never really happened? No...) and rarely having friends.
So did I do the smart thing and help my brother out and make him a friend?

No... I am just as horrible as everyone who picked on me (trust me ive had 1 friend my entire life and thats only recently, im not the popular one) if not worse because I used to crack jokes about my flesh and blood... to this day I feel bad for every single time I have ever hurt him physically or emotionally... I know I will never have an apology for the people who abused me but at least he has recieved an apology from someone who harrassed him.

I know an apology does not change things, I myself would never feel better from an apology... I have actually been scarred for life, I am afraid to talk to people... literally.. and to top it up I am so emotionally drained I would be dead today if it had not been for owning a guitar, I am the alternative to a school shooter, I am someone who longs for his own death...

School shootings are stupid, ESPECIALLY when its because of gang violence or someone just not liking someone... but to have your heart crushed and destroyed can traumatize anyone, people turn their heartbreak into anger

We're not justifying blowing away everybody in viable range, it's just that a person with the mindset of a tortured abused person is not going to have the same sense of right and wrong that the next person will have. They might see themselves as doing the world a favor or something.

Of course, most of the time the kid will just cap him/herself in the end rather than stand for the whole mess they've created, which makes one wonder why the heck they didn't just do that in the first place. Oh well.

Initiatives need to be put into place to prevent bullying and what not, not to deal with the aftermath of society's failure. That kind of attitude simply won't work.

I think someone should do something about this. The fact is, had they slapped those wrists in the first place, had they told someone off seriously, the whole thing would have been prevented.

That's what I'm against.

I went through some rough times in lower school, and to date, have only a couple of friends. I don't have war stories like some of you might have, but I've got some stories. Like one of a certifiably insane girl who scratched me in the face in 4th grade. And of how she scratched herself in the forearms to make it seem like I attacked her. And of how the teacher believed her, and scolded me, even after the whole class sided with me on the matter, and with tons of witnesses. (they haven't ever really been my FRIENDS, but we are able to get along more lately)

And, did I consider attacking her? She who made it a point to make me feel like shit? Who's entire life has been about choosing someone and making them kill themselves, and who, back then, chose me? (she was expelled for attempting to break a window a few weeks after my incident. The teacher refused to make a note of either incident, so as to not ruin her chances at an education. The girl went on to apply at a special school in Miami, but was refused. She then went on to a school here. Last I heard of her, she tried to poke a kid's eye with a pencil. little angel my ass)

Fact is, I never did. I've always been a rather not violent guy (out side of videogames) I knew that attacking any of them would get me in trouble, and I didn't want that. Also, I knew that it was stooping down to their level, and I didn't want to hit a girl. I am against violent solutions to problems, and I got lucky that most of the kids in my class either grew up or learned to fuck off by 6th grade.

But, I can sympathise with any kid who decides he's had enough, and that solutions need to be permanent. After all, excepting the social stigmata (is the word used correctly?) that he'll carry for the rest of his life, those kids will never bother him again. Besides, he didn't attack anyone else. He wasn't doing it to attack as many as possible, like the kids at Columbine, but rather because he saw no other solution. Had he gone on a rampage of hatered and violence, I would have likely joined the throes of mobs at his house. But, he was interested in ending a problem that no one else was willing to help him with. Teachers were too busy laughing at the bad jokes the kids did on him, and I'm sure that the bullies were popular kids, so that no kid would want to help him.

I also think that the policies of schools need a drastic reform. Not the curriculums, not the teachers, but the policies. Especially for lower schools, where the violence begins. The reason that (american) society is what it is, is that the bad elements in children aren't rooted out quick. These are the futures, and, as it stands, our futures are bleak. I don't care that in 12 years everything will be over. Before then, my self-esteem will already be way down. Mine, personally, is not good. I've one good friend in Ecuador (in another school, with different vacation schedules, so I don't get to see him often), tend to suck at everything that I enjoy, suck at everything that will be useful sometime in the future, and have an ever expanding waistline. I have difficulty talking with others, unless I know them well enough, or I am paying them (psychologists). When I DO talk with others, I tend to fuck up. I hate having to go out anywhere, and prefer to spend my time in front of my trusty computer, be it playing a videogame, or "talking" to "strangers" on these forums. Teachers need to realize that these things they consider temporary, are really quite permanent to us. And they need to clamp down. NOW.

And, X-Japan, do me two favors, please. The first, is to tell me wheter he used a regular gun or a BB gun, and what the injuries were.

The other one is to tell that kid (if you know him, or his family) that there are at least two people who sympathize with him.

I sympathize with both the kid who was harassed AND the bully. The kid who was harassed and teased, who hasn't done anything other than look like an easy target, is emotionally wrecked. The bully is merely a victim of the skewed social hierarchy at schools, where in order to become and remain popular, one must pick on others. These kids are inadvertantly taught that there are more rewards (e.g. popularity, friends) than there are punishments for these cruel actions.