Another school shooting. Another bully shot. Another victim in police custody.

Bullies know how to game the system. They know the lines they cannot step over and avoid them. Then they do everything short of it.

Eventually, the bullies' victims are forced to fight back, and because they aren't psychopaths they don't play the game the same way. They retaliate, and the rules of our system punish the victims for fighting back but are helpless to punish the bullies who technically haven't broken any rules. And when the victims feel they have no choice but to respond with deadly force, the bullies are not only the victims, they're martyrs.

I actually had one of my characters in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Columbine address this. I think I was more eloquent when I wrote this paragraph than I can be right now, so I'll just reprint it here.



Until we actually change the system to fight the bullies we are going to keep having these kinds of tragedies.

I agree with you 100%. And telling a kid who's getting his ass kicked every day that "it gets better" is cold comfort sometimes.

Last week I was wondering if the man who shot his ex-boss in NYC had been bullied by him. News stories have said that they filed harassment complaints against one another, but the shooter was described as a quiet loner and the boss was gregarious. Of course, society makes it the quiet loner's fault that they're bullied, because people are supposed to be outgoing.

at Columbine were the bad guys, and they somehow deviously made themselves into victims. that's absurd and sickening.

In the end, people who shoot and kill other people- no matter how badly they may have been bullied- are ultimately responsible. And by taking others' lives, they become worse than the bullies.

The "victims" at Columbine were no such thing. They were bullies -- tormentors who actively targeted and sought to destroy those they perceived as weaker than them. And our system protected them.

The shooters at Columbine weren't justified in the murders, but they were the real victims. They had been victims for years and finally snapped.

I don't think that the dead at Columbine deviously made themselves into victims. Our system did that for them. And attitudes like the one you expressed here are what enable bullies to continue to do what they do.

the real victims were those who were murdered- some of whom didn't even know the murderers let alone bully them.

Furthermore, I've read repeatedly that Eric Harris was himself a bully.

are those that enable them. Lionizing bullies and forgiving their sins just encourages more of their kind.

a bullied kid has the opportunity to work through being bullied. Just like I, the victim of childhood physical and sexual abuse, had the opportunity to work through that. Murder victims do not ever have that opportunity.

And no, I don't enable or lionize bullies.

Too bad you excuse murderers like Diebold and Harris. And you clearly do that.

Disgusting.

Hey, good try at bullying me, honey.

It won't work.

You KNOW you are right, huh?

Well, coming from a kid who was never allowed to sit down on the bus, who had a chair kicked out from under them in the cafeteria and who had a member of the football team invite them to the prom (but was smart enough to know THAT was bullshit and at least said 'no'), I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for bullies.

And do you know what HEINOUS crime I had committed? I was smart. I had been moved into special classes off campus for smart kids, so when I was back at my 'regular' school, I was pretty much tortured.

Murder is NOT a solution, but when kids get pushed and pushed and pushed and it feels as if there is no way out; sometimes that is what they fall back on. There is a difference between recognizing shared blame and excusing Klebold and Harris.

Are you really going to tell me it isn't?

And no, I wasn't bullied at school. I only had my head smashed against the wall so that I still have a scar on my forehead by my father. My crime? I got a C on a report card. I was tortured at home by both my parents.

I'd say that kind of behavior would be grounds for a brutal ass-kicking(what kind of FUCKING PRICK.....hurts his own daughter for getting a C on a report card?). Certainly, at least, I'd have hurt that scumbag dad of yours so bad he'd probably end up wetting himself in his sleep just thinking of me.

IMO, the worst bullies are those who hurt kids out of sheer malice, bar none....I wish I could hug you right now, Cali. No one deserves that kind of awful treatment.

I can play, too!! I have a scar on my chin where my father backhanded me when I was sixteen. I had called him out for being an alcoholic. Note to self: It isn't wise to accuse a large, angry alcoholic of BEING an alcoholic while they are still drunk.

I am sure that there are people here with personal histories much worse than either of ours.

The difference between the two of is how our histories have informed our viewpoints. Mine has made me see that most violent situations are more complex than simply right/wrong. Yours have made you an absolutist with a stark, simplistic innocent/guilty paradigm.

Let's head at this another way:

My point is not that the bullied kids are guilt free when they snap and kill their accusers, or decide that life isn't worth living so they are going to go out in a blaze of glory. No one is saying that killing the people who torture you is OK, only that it is understandable. The thing is, if you ONLY come at this from the viewpoint that the shooter is just WRONG. The End. Period.; then you have little chance of instituting any real or effective change. This is a multi-faceted issue and simplistic thinking is not going to prevent future instances.

Recognizing that these kinds of school shootings usually involve shared responsibility is the only way to stop them. Instead of just telling kids, "You can't kill the people who are making your life a living hell every single day."; it might be better to work to stop the torture AND tell kids not to kill the people who are making their lives a living hell every single day.

Do you also think that the way to stop kids from committing suicide who have been bullied is to say, "Suicide is wrong. Don't do that."? Obviously not. So, if you can see that the bullying and the suicide are connected and the bully shares some responsibility for the kid that kills himself, why can't you see that the bully also shares some responsibility for the kid that snaps and kills THEM?

and sorry but I'm done in this thread. It's simply too painful.

Oh, and I never saw it in black and white terms except for that one thing.

Of course bullying is a huge problem. Of course you can't simply tell bullied kids not to murder.

And of course I never said anything of the kind.

I find the habit so many here have of twisting the words of others to be a form of bullying. Ironic because that's what YOU are doing.

edited to add: I would never be so snarky, cavalier or callous about someone's history of abuse. Shame on you.

You are now the sole inhabitant of my ignore list

One set who were bullied for years without intervention. Told to suck it up and deal with another day or told to get over it. That is the life they were led to live. The other victims are some of whom who probably did victimize the shooters or some who probably watched and did nothing.

The first group didn't deserve to be bullied and the both sets didn't deserve to die. Intervention on bullying in the United States needed to be done decades if not centuries before. It's a culture of abusing those who are weaker than you. And sometimes those victims rise up in dangerous ways in order to end their torment.

Bullying is not something you just get over; it will affect you until the day you die.

we don't know if the victim of this shooting was a bully. There's no evidence presented. and people in this thread are claiming some pretty rank bullshit.

And yes, you can work through bullying- and that is what I said. I never said you can get over it, but yes, you can come to terms with it and even triumph over it.

I've been horrifying sexually abused. I still bear the scars of being hit as a kid. And yes, I've largely worked through it. Now tell me I don't understand or that bullying at school is worse than being abused at home.

Other posters on this thread along with myself can name hundreds of other emo kids we grew up with who got more shit heaped upon them in high school, and instead of shooting the place up they adapted, kept their head down, (or switched schools in a worst case scenario) and went on to live productive lives...

Yes, I get that the high school social hierarchy is a monument to meaningless and petty bullshit... But I won't ever buy into the victimization of the Columbine killers...I think they were mentally ill and the bullying was just one of many "triggers" that could have set it off...I also think that if this didn't happen in high school, there was a good chance of it happening later in life, i.e., workplace shooting or one of those guys who one day slaughters his wife and kids after dinner...

Besides, using the slippery-slope cliche, if the jocks/popular/rich kids are the villains in this tragedy, then feminists are the villains in this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre

Almost everybody has been bullied at some point in their life. It's part of life. Everyone remembers sometime someone said something mean to them.

Don't slander shooting victims. It's a terrible thing to do. You know absolutely nothing about those students. Sit back and realize how silly your statements were, practically blaming those shooting victims for their own deaths, or at the very least, accusing them of bullying.

Harris and his accomplice were bullies themselves. They bullied with ammunition. The only thing they could possibly be a victim of was their poor mental health.

The whole bullying meme with Columbine has been widely dispelled, and it's generally understood that Eric Harris was simply a raging sociopath who once wrote that he wanted to kill everyone who'd ever annoyed him. While they were certainly "outsiders" at their school, that position had more to do with the fact that they were antisocial loners who chose not to join any of the schools major social groups. They isolated themselves. In fact, in spite of years of research on the matter, investigators could not find ONE instance of either of the shooters being bullied in any consistent way, and in fact turned up numerous accounts of Eric Harris himself bullying other people.

The FBI reports were pretty clear. Eric Harris was a sociopathic psycho with a superiority complex. Klebold, in all probability, was suffering from longstanding clinical depression that was likely caused by a genuine mental disorder. Any failures involving the two revolve around the utter ineptitude of our mental health system to identify and treat people like this, and has little to do with the failure of anti-bullying campaigns.

As for the suggestion that the victims somehow "deserved" what they got.... Of the 34 people these two nutjobs shot, it's estimated that only a handful of them even KNEW Klebold or Harris. Of those, only a couple were found to have ever had any real interactions with them, and none of them were negative in any way. These two weren't looking for "revenge". They just wanted to kill people.

This.

Thank you.

The bullied/shooter is the shooting perp. No question.

The bully, however, is the contributing factor and, morally at least, is equally culpable.

There are no "winners" here.

I was bullied for years and years but I never wanted to shot any of those people. It did end when I finally snapped after a particularly bad day all around and I broke one kids arm and gave the other one a large bruise on the side of his face. That was a momentary snap, shooting a bully is something that is planned. I can completely understand fighting back with fists or anything you have at hand but to plan a shooting is wholly criminal and shows how weak a person you really are. You have to live with the knowledge that those bullies probably already and will continue to have a shitty life. Those 2 kids that I snapped on, one of them was killed in a bar room fight, that from all reports he started and the other is in prison for 20 years for kidnapping and attempted murder, while I'm currently in college getting my BA in History, have an awesome girlfriend and an awesome family.

and thanks for your insightful post.

I'm so glad that life is treating you well. good luck in the future. And thanks for understanding what I was saying. I was not and am not condoning bullying in any way shape or form.

did some truly horrific things to the shooters.

As a child, I was bullied nearlynto death by these two neighborhood delinquents. They tormenteld many others besides myself, which was cold comfort. I was knocked down and urinated on by these two guys more times than I can remember. I use to fantasize about killing them.

Nature took its course. The two neighborhood terrors went on to become career criminals and ended up dying in prison. But if someone in school had shot them, at the time I would have rejoiced.

I wish I knew what the solution was to the bullying problem. My son, in turn, went through it himself, but thanks to some martial arts training and lots of coaching from me, was able to beat the shit out of his tormentor. It didn't change the tormentor's behavior - he just stopped picking on my kid and chose weaker targets.

Eliminate school sports teams...particularly football.
In most cases the jocks are the source of much of it....they are revered by the teacher and student alike and some of them start to feel they have the right to push anyone around...cause that is what football trains them to do and form themselves into clicks that are protected and even encouraged by the school...because "school spirit" is formed around them.
IMHO school should be ALL about education and not about some phony loyalty over a game.

So let the flaming beguine but I feel it forms an unhealthy atmosphere for kids and distracts from the importance and meaning of education.

to not only participate, but lead the torture of the small kids and others who had no interest in athletics.

I hated PhysEd so much I used to dread attending. The locker rooms were not much better than back alleys as perfect venues for torturing weaker kids.

And that was more than 50 years ago.

who thought it was just priceless to throw a football at the back of my head and practically knock my block off. During basketball season, I got the ball hurled into my gut at top speed.

What an asshole that guy was. I guess in his thick skull, he thought he was toughening me up.

Take it from someone who has been bullied, its the people who do not get involved in anything outside of school that are the bullies and more times than not its because their parents are bullies. It has nothing to do with school sports teams, whether they are a rough sport or not.

With "bad" parents.
From my own observations in life and evidence from the Columbine incident I say that bullies can be made by the system.
You take a kid and teach him that he is special and far superior to the weak around him he has a pretty good chance of being a bully....and they can and do come from "good" homes.
And in HS particularly it is cliquish and the system is designed to make heroes...and you got to be a football hero to get along with the beautiful girls kind of thing....

And it comes down to what you want the school to do....educate the kids in the sciences and literature and promote intelligence or do you want them to train people socially to fit into the constructed society we have....that is, that the strong win and crush the week....and if you can't be a crusher be a cheerleader...and if not a cheer leader then be one in the grand stand that cheers when the cheer leader says to.

http://bully-stories.com/a-story-of-bullies-punished/
A Story of Bullies Punished
submitted by Michael D & filed under Bullied In The Past
posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

This is a true story with only the names changed to protect my identity. I entered 8th grade in the fall of 1969. Eighth graders were thrown in with grades 9 through 12 in my high school. I lived in a Southern town outside of Atlanta where Friday night football reigned supreme.

Everyone was required to take Physical Education (P.E.) in 8th and 9th grades. Jocks and the academically less inclined frequently opted to take P.E. past the two required years as an easy elective. Grades 8 through 12 were mixed together in P.E. classes. There would be approximately 60 boys in one P.E. class, which would be divided into two sections, each with a football coach as teacher. We would change in a large locker room and then wait for the coaches to show up. They would show up occasionally, take roll, and maybe make us run laps. The coaches normally came very late to class, if they came at all. The older students would spend the period bullying the younger ones.

My 5th period P.E. class met every day after lunch. It had a group of juniors who played varsity football. They would come into the locker room, select a non-athletic 8th grader at random, and drag him down to the varsity football locker room at the end of the hall. I do not know for sure what went on down there, but there were be screaming and sometimes crying followed by the naked victim running down the hall to the showers. His belly would be bright red, a so called “cherry belly” or “slap belly” caused by slapping. His buttocks would bear the bright red marks of a belt. His testicles would be covered in a heating gel used by athletes to treat sore muscles. The victim would be running to the shower or sink to wash off the gel which burned intensely on sensitive skin.

The bullies love those who resisted, and they delighted most in the ones who cried. I remember one boy I will call “Billy.” He was mentally and physically disabled. Today I think he would probably be excused from a P.E. class, but this was a less enlightened era in a very backwards, rural part of the USA. Billy was short, weak, and skinny. He was in remedial courses and struggled academically. His family was poor, and he wore outdated, threadbare, ill-fitting clothes. He would begin crying when the bullies showed up to select their victim. He was bullied throughout the school day, but he suffered the most in that P.E. class.

Even though I was not an athlete, I was protected because the quarterback (QB) of the football team lived in my neighborhood, and his parents knew mine. When the bullies came for me a couple of times, the QB said, “Not him.” Even though the QB was not involved in the hazing, he had veto power over the selection of victims.

Despite my protected status, I dreaded P.E. I was bullied some, but I was spared the worst treatment. No one dared tell. The coaches did not care. I suspect they even knew about it. The football coaches and players were demigods in the town. I knew that no one would do anything, and terrible retribution would fall upon anyone who dared to tell. My older brother told me that this group of junior football players had been doing this form of hazing since their freshman year.

One day in English class, a student said something very negative about the Vice Principal (VP) who was in charge of discipline. The teacher spoke up in the VP’s defense and said something about how fair and honorable a man the VP was. I did not know the VP, but I greatly respected this teacher. I went home that afternoon and called the school office. I asked to speak to the VP. I told him what was happening in the P.E. class. He told me he would look into it the first thing in the morning. He then said, “I will need to know your name. I promise you that I will never reveal your identity to anyone, not even the coaches. I will just say that there have been several complaints.” I told him my name.

After I hung up, it occurred to me that I should give him names. I called him back, and named the eight students who had done the bullying and about seventeen students who had been bullied. He was writing down the names of the students. He would ask me to repeat or spell names. He had been very calm, professional, and matter-of-fact over the phone. His demeanor inspired my confidence in him. When I mentioned the name of Billy, he gasped. I then paused to describe in vivid detail Billy’s weeping and the bullies’ mockery of his pain and suffering. As I gave the rest of the list, there was a stunned silence on the other end of the line. When I finished, he said, “I will discuss this with the principal at once, and I will call in the coaches this afternoon after practice.” He then reassured me once again that he would never reveal my identity.

When I went to P.E. the next day, the bullies were running around frantically telling those who had been bullied that they were not to reveal what had happened to them. They said, “If you think what happened before was bad, what will happen to you for talking will be far worse.” The bullies were trying to concoct a story about how they were only playing around and no one had been hurt. One of them suggested that they say they had only tickled the underclassmen.

I think the bullies had been alerted to the investigation because two of the bullies – the first two on my list – had been called out at the end of lunch period. One by one, the bullies were called out of the P.E. locker room. An office aid would come to the door of the boys’ locker hall and call out a name. Five minutes later the process would be repeated. Once a bully left, he did not return. They were called out in the exact order I had listed them. I do not know who was questioning them, what they were being asked, or what they were saying. I do not know if any of those on my listed of bullied had been questioned. I tried to keep a low profile. Because I had not been bullied, I was not suspected as the source.

The next day, the coaches came to P.E. class on time. I suspect that the coaches had gotten into big trouble. The class was divided into teams to play flag football, except for the bullies. The bullies were forced to do pushups, sit-ups, wind sprints, and banks (sprinting up a very steep hill) over and over for the entire P.E. period. Then they had to report to football practice after school. I heard they had to do additional exercises after football practice. This went on for a week. They were miserable. I could tell they were very unhappy.

Each day as the bullies were being punished, the VP stood on the top of the hill overlooking the athletic field. I vividly remember him in his tie and dress shirt, wearing sunglasses, his arms crossed across his chest or resting on his hips, stains under his arms from the September heat in the Deep South. To me, he personified justice. Someone in my P.E. class asked, “Why is the VP there?” Someone else answered, “To make sure the coaches don’t go easy.”

The bullies swore that they would find out who had reported them. They said that they would take him to a remote cabin and torture him to death over the course of days. The body would never be found, or if was found, it would be too mutilated to be identified. For these reasons, I waited twenty years before I told my story to anyone. The hazing that had gone on for over two years ended the day that I made those phone calls. Bullying continued, but not on the same organized and extreme scale.

The VP died a few years later. Many came forward to say what a brave and honorable man he was. I wish I had been able to tell my story then.

Today I do not fear or hate those particular bullies. I do despise all bullies I meet in my life, and I hope I will always have the courage of the VP. Bullies do not have the power over my life they way the did at one time.

I will, however, always be haunted by the memory of Billy. I clearly remember his weeping and pleas for mercy being met with mockery and derision. If a society is judged by the treatment of its weakest members, then that was one sick society.

I tried to track down Billy years later. He had fallen off the grid if he was ever on it. I pray that, wherever he may be, his blessings in his later years were great enough to compensate somewhat for the terrible suffering he endured in high school. If he no longer walks the face of the earth – and I suspect this is so because he was so very weak and sickly – may he find in the next life the mercy that was denied to him in this one.

I'm sorry you were bullied. I'm glad you came through it.

In any case, Diebold and Harris murdered, in cold blood, people they didn't even know as well as people they did know, who m may or may not have bullied them. That's on them. And those kids never got the chance to grow up.

and I've heard this is not uncommon. I also recall hearing at the time that one of them had their expensive bicycle tossed off a cliff by some jocks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Harris_and_Dylan_Klebold

I think the trouble for bullied kids begins when they start to disconnect from everyone, and retreat into their fantasies of revenge. Either the parents miss this withdrawal, or are themselves in denial that anything is wrong.

I had been on the lookout for this with my own son, and noticed him withdrawing in the seventh grade, and I immediately began discussing things with him, most particularly assuring him that he was NOT alone and was NOT a weird kid. I related my bullying experiences to him, and offered him several strategies. He had an advantage that I did not, which was physical size, so with training he was able to punch out the bully and send him on his way. This action earned him enough respect to avoid any subsequent bullying right up through grade 12.

Unfortunately, there are bullies everywhere - in the workplace, on the street, in the supermarket - it seems to be a part of the human condition.

I've never owned or even shot a gun, and am not interested in them, but I can see how the kids who are bullied can get into a mindset to kill. That doesn't mean I condone it, but I can see how the mind could go there. I remember my juvenile mind flitting around from self-hatred to hatred of my bullies and just into plain rage or primal fear. The immature mind has trouble enough wading through hormones and growing up, let alone rage and flight or fight on a daily basis like a hunted animal.

Yes, this will continue in our wonderful gun culture until we address the BULLY, and acknowledge that the bullied kids have every right to live without meeting his approval and not be tormented.

Not disagreeing with you, but guns are simply the latest way this works.

A victim who takes a swing at a bully is likely to find himself suspended or expelled while the bully is free to continue.

A victim who tries to use the system to protect himself just makes himself seem weaker and a riper target for more persecution.

A victim who shoots a bully ends the bully's reign of terror, and either literally or metaphorically his own life, too.

This isn't a gun issue. This is an issue of a system that in far too many cases is stacked against victims. This is a "boys will be boys" mentality that discounts those who torment others as just being young and foolish.

Our school systems need to treat words and psychological attacks the same way they treat slaps and punches. Maybe treat them harder since their damage lasts longer and goes deeper.

But lethal revenge is simplified now.

Eric Harris in particular was a really nasty piece of work and responsible for quite a lot of bullying himself.

It's certainly a common dynamic for the jocks to pick on the social misfits and to get away with it too, but Columbine is a poor example because of Harris and Klebold's mental health issues. It wasn't a case of suddenly snapping or the straw that broke the camel's back. They spent a year planning it out and making bombs. And they were weeks away from graduation.

They also planned to hijack a plane from Denver airport and crash it into a building in New York. How is that a response to "bullying"?

Some people are just sociopaths. And while I applaud your efforts to be understanding and empathetic, in some cases that is misplaced and bordering on disrespectful to the 13 kids (most of whom were not jocks or bullies) who were killed by those two.

And those who forgive the bullies whose victims finally go too far are just as harmful as those who do the bullying. Maybe even worse, because they perpetuate the cycle.

I had bullies in my school too I’m sure we all did, and I will admit I want to kill them however, prison has a way of bring reality to the forefront. That reality being kill one bully and get caged up with thousands of bullies that math doesn’t work for me.

They're suicidal and want to take their tormentors with them. I got close to that point several times in high school, and I wish I knew what pulled me back from the brink.

Apparently self-defense makes you just as bad as the bully. Crap like that I why I reject the whole non-violence and pacifism thing, it seems to have been turned into just another ideology used by the PTB to keep us down.

Aboslutely NO adult supervision.

Maybe a country that pushes being first, exceptional, armed to the teeth, and supports pr-emptive strikes is sending the wrong message.

And that's what our education system was based upon.

The modern British system (which "Lord of the Flies" was about) rose during the Victorian era under the influence of Prince Albert.

at my kids school about how bullying is unacceptable, but when the kids actually go to school authorities about being bullied there is no real plan of action. They talk a good talk but don't do anything about it when it happens.

TYY

and being seriously outnumbered.......

Bullying is unprovoked aggression, pretty much by definition.

If the kid didn't have access to a gun he would have stabbed the bully. Or poisoned him. Or done something else.

This was a crime that could have been easily prevented, but not under our current system.

...he used a gun.

It's not like our culture doesn't encourage such behavior in its core...got a problem with someone, get even with a gun.

Your sophistry on the such matters hardly changes the basic ontological facts

The problem is a system that protects bullies, lionizes them, and when someone finally fights back makes them out to be a victim.

Making this a "gun issue" obscures the real problem.

This wasn't some yahoo opening fire in a theater. This wasn't some bigot opening fire in a Sikh temple trying to kill "evil muslins." This was one victim who had finally had enough and thought he had no recourse but to kill his attacker.

This is not a gun issue. This is a bullying issue. This is an American culture issue. Please don't obfuscate the underlying problem here.

...both James Holmes and Wade Michael Page felt victimized and so they lashed out at society. Your attempts to refrain this as something other than a disturbed individual seeking recourse through the barrel of a gun are quaint, but ultimately of poor construction. Either way, I hope you sell some more books, the economy is lousy.

Good Day

is bringing attention to the effects of bullying, trying to get our schools to stop talking about it and do something about it before we have more shootings.

I guess you could call that "doing" something.

Despite the efforts of the revisionists who felt the need to wash away the sins of the dead, there were no innocents at Columbine. Nor are there in any school shooting.

And it's a pretty complex issue - I live in an area (northern New England) that is, by most standards, heavily armed, and has been for decades - but we have comparatively few of these incedents until recently.

...through stricter regulation and increased social responsibility.

It's a pain in the ass to be around people who pack heat or are sloppy with weapons - so they get the message from somebody about being a pain in the ass.
Just like guys who are sloppy with actheleyne torches and chain binders don't stay around......

High school was literally the worst 4 years of my life and I was bullied when I was 16. The thing is most of us in the 90's (I graduated in '94) were not bringing guns to school. It was before the dawn of the internet and cell phones. I was not surfing the net until '95 and got my first cell phone after college. Technology makes bullying so much easier.

It literally made me ill in ways I have not yet fully gotten under control. Considering I was destined to become physically disabled later on, I could've done without the extra torment.

I keenly remember a day when a girl hauled me around by my hair (it was long), making it look like we were walking normally, but yanking on it whenever I didn't do what she wanted. Fact is, I don't have a violent bone in my body. It wasn't in me to fight back in that way. As it went on and on in many different forms, I couldn't take it anymore. The students wouldn't change, the teachers didn't care and were sometimes participants. I dropped out, finished my grade at home, and then got a GED.

I wouldn't kill, I wouldn't condone killing, but there were certainly days when I wished I could've fought back. I hung out with people like this kid, the outcasts, the trenchcoat wearers and such. All nice, we just happened to be into things outside of the mainstream. I can understand how someone with less willpower could, under such conditions, snap.

In my senior year. I went on to score the highest score IN OUR STATE ever on my GED at the time. I was a Morehead Scholar nominee from my county and first in my class. I never went back after Christmas break. I couldn't take it any more. I have managed to put together a life that I truly love, but the emotional scars that I received for being different in high school caused me a great deal of trouble throughout my life. I am only NOW, 32 years later, really starting to realize my own worth.

Bullying lasts forever and don't let anybody tell you any different. Even when you have gotten past it and put it behind you, it still leaves a mark.

realize my full potential, if in fact I ever did.

Bullying makes normal people fearful of what should be normal situations. This can manifest itself later in life, as it did with me, as phobic or other neurotic behaviors.

Bullies absolutely cause lifelong damage. I destroys the lives of both the bully and the victim.

These days, I am physically disabled and in constant pain, yet that hasn't managed to overwhelm the emotional/psychological scars. I still have a habit (which I'm trying to break) of looking down when I walk, which I used to do in order to avoid making eye contact and drawing attention to myself.

Teachers are tired of doing the job parents should be doing at home. I have friends who are teachers and teacher's aids; the kids are coming to school with no self control and are just plain rude. I have friends who are college faculty, the same stuff has bubbled up into higher education.

Years ago I would believe people who said it was related to poverty and it was an inner city thing. This goes on in the sub-urban and rural schools too. Teachers and professors have found that students do not have the ability to discuss things, instead discussions usually escalate into hostile and rude arguments.

Civility and manners seem to be out of style.

I agree with your comments. We reap what we sow.

Is Jerry Springer acceptable behavior? I'm no prude, but for someone who does not know right from wrong it certainly sends the wrong message. Do we live in a Clockwork Orange society?

Based on very little information, no less.

out of thin air.

And yet you think it is 'ludicrous' to make 'that sort' of conclusion.

Interesting.

he came up with his claims.

And worse.

This was attempted murder.

No one, not one person in this thread, has excused shooting an unarmed person. But to pretend that a teenager who verbally or physically tortures another teenager to enhance their own status and to salve their own ego is completely innocent isn't realistic and isn't going to help.

Bullying needs to stop BEFORE the kid getting bullied resorts to a gun. And to do that people have GOT to stop looking at these shooters like they are just isolated freaks. Actually, NO! That is exactly what you have got to realize. They ARE isolated freaks....or at least being made to feel as though they are. And what recourse does a teenaged isolated freak think they have when they are being tortured?

AGAIN...there is a difference between excusing the shooter and recognizing that there is shared blame for the situation. And the sharing goes to the adults in the community, the parents of BOTH the shooter and the bully and to the school administration and teachers.

between two kids.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57500919/perry-hall-high-school-student-shot-on-first-day-of-school-in-apparent-grudge-situation-police-say/

"Police said they do not believe the victim was targeted."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-perry-hall-high-shooting-20120827,0,970506.story

Huffpost is using a thread at DU with no citation or proof to "report" that "bullying may have been a factor." Why any news site would "report" on a discussion forum thread with no back-up is beyond me.

to suggest that the victim was the only bullying him. Nothing.

that I have sympathy for a bullied kid. I get that actions tend to beget reactions and while I do not condone shooting someone whom you feel is torturing you; I understand it.

I feel like your responses are leaning toward total lack of sympathy for the the shooter, even if they were previously bullied. That might be because your comments are pretty terse, so they leave a lot of room for speculation. Do you not think that if one kid repeatedly verbally or physically (or both) abuses another kid, that a school shooting isn't exactly SHOCKING? And that somewhere along the line there is some room for some sympathy for the kid that snaps? Not excusing his behavior, but at least understanding it?

That is a circular, unconfirmed citation. No credible citations. Anyone can say anything on a discussion forum.

There are apparently conflicting stories as to whether the shooting was targeted or not.

... the OP in this thread explicitly says that the victim was the "tormentor" of the shooter. With no citation to a credible news story, no back-up whatsoever. For a news site, even a "news aggregator" like HuffPost, to cite a back-up-free discussion forum post as a possible part of the developing story is highly irresponsible and just stupid, stupid, stupid.

Hell, I could go to freerepublic right now and "cite" forums posts that could indicate that Obama was born in Kenya and studied socialism under Osama Bin Laden and Barbara Streisand ... "story developing ..."

I don't see anywhere in the OP of why he made these claims that he did.
Sounds like a complete speculation on his part to me.

Who provided no links or information of how he came with the claims in his OP. Reminds me of a commercial about a woman who thinks everything is true on the internet and thinks she is dating a "french model."

why not?

Can it even be taught to those who are genetically predisposed to not have any? I knew some really nasty fuckers who actually had wonderful families. But they themselves acted like sociopaths.

I believe a common theory today is that bullies are themselves bullied at home, but to my knowledge, my tormentors had wonderful parents.

There are indeed a few bullies who didn't have shitty parents, but becamse that way thru other means. It happens.
Sorry you were bullied, btw.

Very few of us have had perfect lives. We all have our demons.

Peace.

I don't know if mine are as good.

• Does Zero Tolerance teach empathy?
• Does forcibly putting kids in a "hostile workplace" like environment teach empathy?
• Can a "non-hostile workplace" school environment be "forcibly" created?

My own answers these questions are "No". But I have no science to back that up, just personal experience.

From the OP:



The source was our local noon nooz. The reporters were on scene as the story was - as cited - breaking.

Bullying, in fact, is what they were reporting at the time I heard the story.

Mea culpa for not being here all day keeping everyone update (which I said I wasn't going to do)(because I was not anywhere from which I could hear nooz and post). I posted what I was hearing as I was about to leave for the rest of the day.

I see nothing on HuffPo. Did I miss that? And shame on them if they used a post of mine *with no citations whatsoever* as a news source. Further, this wasn't posted in DU's LBN forum.


on edit: I am going to be out again for a while and so will not be back any time soon for an update.

It was very clear in the OP. I'm sorry your knickers are in a wad, but there ya go.

"The kid who was bullied was one of the all-in-black/trenchcoat types. He brought some sort of long gun to school today. In the cafeteria, he shot his tormentor in the back. So far, no one is dead, but the shooting victim/bully is in critical condition."

You stated this plainly with the implication that it was known as fact. So much so that some irresponsible person at HuffPost decided to cite your post as a source. Just throwing a sentence or two in there about how this is still a chaotic breaking story only implies that there are more facts to come.

You screwed up. Take responsibility.

No one has, through this morning, said it was not true. What they are saying is that they won't speculate.

But whatever. You see it your way and that's that. Have a swell day.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/alleged-baltimore-school-shooter-facebook-clues/story?id=17094155

"He hit 17-year-old Daniel Borowy, who has Down's Syndrome, in the back and fired a second shot as teachers grabbed him, police said. Police have said that it was a random shooting and that Borowy was not an intended target."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194769/First-day-school-day-life-The-chilling-Facebook-message-goth-Baltimore-gunman-15-posted-shooting-student-tackled-heroic-teacher.html#ixzz24slNqhB7

I suspected that when I read "special needs".