What I stated is that they are often bullied. 40% is certainly often.
As for school vs mass shootings, most school shootings are not mass shootings. Usually they target specific individuals for reasons we can understand vs the mass shooters who are acting out of various levels of mental illness.
Student feels bullied by a teacher or other student and shoots them.
Drug deal goes bad.
Jealousy.
Such events usually don’t turn into mass shootings, and are understandable.
Student who is angry at a group because of bullying, ostracism, etc who shoots up the whole school, acting in a manner that’s hard for sane people to fathom.
Student who has a long list of grievances, has known mental health history, bullied, ostracized, treated unfairly by teachers and administration, plots revenge attack and plans to die in infamy. Acting in a manner not consistent with sane or rational thinking and again difficult for the rest of us to understand.
Here’s a thought. When I was in grammar school in Chicago in the 1950s and early 1960s as a young kid the Chicago police are used to have officers detailed as what they called Officer Friendly. There were several Officer Friendly’s you always knew them because they wore a white uniform cap. Now they all wear a different baseball type caps and things like that or none at all but why can’t school districts re-institute officer Friendly’s in the cities and suburbs we could do the same thing they go around to different schools each day and tell kids what they could do how to act, things like that. It’s just taking an old idea and bringing it forward again. There would not be any liability involved this is the police department in the cities or the suburban areas. It’s just being proactive in this new philosophy that they have “if you see something say something” it’s just a new version of this.
That was under the same community policing model where in large cities you’d have cops partnered up on foot patrols daily up and down the same few blocks. They knew everyone, everyone knew them. They’d stop and visit, get to know everyone well beyond the tip your hat, smile, wink and nod.
They knew who the good people were, knew who the thugs were, knew when someone was “out of place” etc.
That kind of policing builds trust and public confidence instead of the “Us Against Them” mentality between cops and the public which we have today for the most part.
That model worked and worked very well and I think greatly reduced the danger to both the public and to officers on the job.
We need to seriously look at going back to that model or something very similar.
@WildRose I understand things have changed and what I’m about to say may be deemed as a reach, and I understand it is not applicable in some situations. But when I was a little kid we settled disputes after school by fighting and the bullying usually ends at that point. School kids settled the bullying immediately that day, or the parents with a phone call after the fighting kids did on the way back home from school. Of course then teachers didn’t bully kids and there was none of his cyber bullying because there was no computers back then but seems like a lot of this type thing could stop with an old fashion fist fight.
You’re heading down a road I’ve traveled many times.
I’ve posited in the past that in that era where we could “work it out behind the gym” we had an outlet for normal teenage violent tendencies and thus a safety valve so to speak kids today do not have.
Not only could we solve such problems immediately and appropriately on the spot, you didn’t have anger, resentment etc boiling up for days, weeks, months and years before someone just “blows”.
Taking boxing and wrestling out of most school sports programs I think has also been a big contributor.
When I was in school it wasn’t unheard of for the coaches or principal to order a couple of boys who kept challenging each other to gear up and work it out in the ring either.
Violence is a part of human nature, something that cannot be counseled or medicated away, it has to be learned, understood, and managed or sooner or later there’s a percentage of young people particularly that are just going to let loose one day in unspeakable ways.
We certainly had crime in that era but such things as mass shootings and mass school shootings were unheard of.
I graduated in 81 and at least half the cars and trucks in the HS parking lot at any given time would have at least one rifle, one shotgun, and a good many of us had handguns as well yet we never considered grabbing any of them to solve a disagreement or grudge.
The closest thing we ever had to a school shooting as my sophomore year when the principle had me shoot a rabid skunk behind the lunchroom and haul it off.
@WildRose Well then Charlie I don’t know what the answer is then. I went to grammar school in the 1950’s and early very early 1960’s. I was in the 7th or 8th grade the classroom the day Kennedy was killed.Graduated high school 1967 and every boy was talking about the Draft and being sent out to Vietnam, not stupid social media and stupid video games. I mean kids used gym class to get ready for the physical challenge of basic training and having a drill sergeants bust your ears and your spirit. So if you’re approach is outdated my approach would be like medieval. I officially give up. I’m at a loss. There’s to much resistance from Teachers Unions and the NEA to bring in armed veterans or off duty police moonlighting. The teachers unions will not stand the notion of the thought of losing any power. I guess with politicians caving to kids and not adults anything is going to get done in a positive manner. Thank you for your thoughts on this matter. Maybe home schooling is the only viable alternative to traditional classrooms. The program K through 12 may be the better answer.
@Robert8@WildRose sounds to me like y’all are really on the same page. Officer Friendly, community policing, getting kids to work it out on a gym mat… I think those are all workable solutions.
I have no idea when we’ll get back to them. I’m thinking it takes a generation. When the kids growing up now look at the massive failure of the policies their parents decisions and political trends created, maybe they make a change. Maybe the pendulum just hasn’t swung far enough for that to happen.
Not advocating for standing down on the fight, by any means. Just not seeing the path to checking this course yet. I thought we were on it, constitutional carry propagating with some momentum. The current rhetoric and rise of red flag laws… that’s not looking like progress.
@Zee. Hi Zee, No I never heard of Whach oh mole. I’ve heard so much after awhile you don’t know what to think, say, or feel. I heard Many or half of millennials don’t have jobs or won’t get jobs? It’s all confusing. All the PC madness with liberal people and all this pronoun ridiculousness are we even supposed to talk to people and have meaningful conversations anymore? I’m not sure.
@robert8 Whack-a-mole is a carnival or arcade game where moles pop up out of various holes and you hit them with a mallet… every time you hit one another randomly pops up. It’s a game of just trying to keep up.
Millennials have a different job challenge than we did, and I don’t think the numbers are as bad as you’ve heard. Many have an education and degrees and are willing but having trouble getting work. Sure, some are spoiled and lazy but a lot are just struggling. Heres some info on what’s holding them back The 5.4% Unemployment Rate Means Nothing for Millennials | HuffPost College
What drives a mass shooter? In the end it’s a head full of bad wiring. No matter what you put into it, it’s going to come out twisted.
A mass shooting, as we’re defining it, is an irrational act. Using rationality and reason to understand it is an exercise in futility, doomed to failure. While logic and reason might help us to understand certain predictors, they will never make sense of it because it makes no sense. Logic cannot be applied to understand chaos. At BEST logic and reason may be used as a lens through which we might observe past events in order to anticipate the likely outcome resulting from a confluence of certain chaos elements. Even then, no guarantees.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, it just means we shouldn’t think there are any easy or final answers. In particular, the people we have tasked with the formulation and enforcement of laws applying to 350 million+ people need to act cautiously and adhere to the medical maxim of ‘first, do no harm’.
When I was a kid, we had the work it out with boxing gloves or on a mat. I only got asked to do it once. I was literally 155 lbs. and 5’11" and the other guy was significantly bigger. I was never the fastest or strongest, but I was by far the quickest (Yes there is a difference between quick and fast).
He lasted about 30 seconds, and the Coach had to rush me. It was kind of funny because the guy was really popular, even though he was a bully, and all anyone wanted to talk about was how I had “cheated” because I used martial arts instead of wrestling with him.
P.S. My cousin who taught me, kicked my butt up one side of the dojo and down the other in front of his black belt class, for letting that kid goad me into a fight and using my training. My pride was a huge complication for me as a kid. Especially, after I hit 13. I have bought everything I have ever owned, I had bought myself a nice gold chain, and while we were in PE one of his friends grabbed my chain and broke it, and I decked his friend.
I learned a very important lesson that day. Don’t mess with the Sensei, he may have taught you all you know, but he sure hasn’t taught you all he knows.
My opinion is, they don’t come from a strong family base with both a mother & father present with brothers and sisters with family values (Christian values). Knowing the value of Life, having pets (like a trained dog that understands what you tell him or her) and learning to love them…Schools now don’t have shop classes like Wood Shop, Electric Shop, Metal Shop, Print Shop, Auto Shop, Craft Shop after school programs, like sports and some shop classes after school. I think they get bullied and don’t know how to cope with it, don’t have Dad around so they go to the ex stream.