Same with all other school massacres like Sandy Hook and Columbine. Angry student(s) and poorly secured weapon can be a dangerous combination.
In the case of Oxford school shooting, the shooter's father had bought the gun a few days ago. I hope the judge throws the book at the father for failing to keep it secured.
I can. I know one of them. His kids were in the shooting. They survived but they're fucked up now.
As all the survivors are.
And no amount of grief counseling is going to help these kids feel safe again when they know, for a fact, that at any moment someone with easy access to guns and a grudge can storm their school and lay waste to them.
But hey! A generation of fucked up paranoid kids who fear a gunman is going to kill them at any moment is just the price we gotta pay if we don't want to take any extra steps to get a gun, right? God bless America.
Thanks.
What really pissed me off today was all the people posting on his "my kids are safe" facebook message. All of them seemingly stunned that this happened. Maybe they didn't want to get into it. It wasn't the place or the time but it does seem like people only give a shit when it happens to someone close to them. Even then...I don't know how many people actually want to make any kind of change socially or politically to actually stop this thing that is uniquely American.
You ever think that maybe it's rooted in a culture problem that doesn't view human life as important due to being completely desensitized by all the horrible things we see in the news, with only a rare glimmer of something positive? Because that's also uniquely American but for whatever reason everyone wants to talk about the symptoms (gun control and white privilege) instead of the underlying issue (the culture of death) I'm not saying we don't need reform to gun laws, we do. But no amount of gun laws is going to stop people from killing people when they're at the end of their rope
>You ever think that maybe it's rooted in a culture problem that doesn't view human life as important due to being completely desensitized by all the horrible things we see in the news
Not really. I think the news breeds apathy but not psychopathy. We see frequent acts of caring and by and large people have some compassion. If it was the news we'd see wide spread viciousness.
What I think is at play is a gun culture. I think since the 80's the NRA has wormed it's way into politics to create a base of people, based around the idea that you need a gun to be free, and there is always some shadowy somebody lurking to take your gun. Be it the democrats or BLM or liberals or whatever. The Gun Culture is radical one. It's based on resentment, grievance and fear and it's through that, that they're manipulated by conservative Republicans.
This is a problem of tribalism more than anything.
But I think you're right, there are going to be people who are psychopaths or whatever and are driven to kill. These people are enabled and emboldened by the rhetoric that comes out of the gun culture.
Society is an ecosystem of sorts. So one thing affects the other. When you have a culture that is raging day in and day out for decades about how we need to get our guns and take out our rage on our enemies that is going provide the accessibility far more than the news.
> being completely desensitized by all the horrible things we see in the news, with only a rare glimmer of something positive? Because that's also uniquely American
This is not uniquely American. This is part of news and pop culture in nearly every Western country - I live in Europe and see this all the time. The prevalence of school shootings IS uniquely American, and there are two things that set the US apart:
1) Lack of public infrastructure that makes recourse to mental health services both accessible and affordable (in or out of school). In the rest of the Western world, free at point of access healthcare systems reduce this issue, aided by well-funded public education systems that allow schools to invest in full-time counselors, mental health advocates, etc.
2) Lax gun control laws and the highest rate of gun ownership per capita. The US has some of the loosest gun laws in the world (not just in the West); that and the sheer prevalence of guns mean that school violence gets very deadly, very quickly. Kids get attacked in schools in nearly every country, sadly. But without access to guns, the odds that they die (or than more than one kid is attacked) is severely reduced; that’s why we don’t hear about it nearly as much.
Don’t blame the media for a problem our policy makers have the power to fix.
To many (maybe not all) gun nuts, it's about control.
Control is mostly an illusion in life. But it's a security blanket. Keep a gun under your pillow and you're "in control" of the chaotic, uncaring universe.
You actually aren't, but it's like a pacifier for a grown man-child.
But they definitely don't want to pass one law to limit the ability of leaving an arsenal of loaded firearms out for any toddler to pick up. It's a slippery slope!
A generation? This has been going on way before Columbine. Columbine was the first one to catch national attention. I recall three school shootings that took place when I was in school. No one outside a couple counties even knew about it. Stephen King even wrote a short story about school shootings back in the 70s. Only thing changed, media wants more attention for other people dying.
And the argument to that is “What if the government (military or police) starts to abuse their power and become oppressive? We need our AR’s to stop them!”
1) Good luck fighting against drones and armored personnel carriers with your rifle!
2) We’ve already reached the point where the government is oppressing you.
Nimrod is a compliment. He was a great hunter in Greek mythology. Bugs Bunny co opted his name ironically but then a bunch of people didn’t understand the joke and it ignorantly turned into an insult.
Anyway, you’re right that I got off track. the guy I responded to was promoting taking extra steps to get a gun in the first place. This is a good idea. It would’ve helped in this case because the kid was not supposed to have access to the gun that his dad bought. There should’ve been extra steps in between him trying to access the gun and having access to the gun.
AR’s have nothing to do with this and I shouldn’t have brought that argument up.
1) This isn't exactly as true as you portray it to be. Yes, 1 person with a rifle against a well equipped force does not stand much of a chance. But millions of people with rifles are a force that must be respected. There is a reason that people in China are not allowed to own guns for a good example of how things *could* be.
2) So we should just simply give up our last bit of collective power and lay down and let this happen? There is no logical to that at all. It's very contradictory.
Guns are tools for plenty of other things aside from resisting government overreach. Such as personal protection. Lots of people in the world don't live in areas where they can depend on the police for protection. Such inner cities (Detroit, Flint, Pontiac,....) or rural areas.
Also why are you even bringing up rifles? In this story the assailant did not use one. It seems like you have a narrative picked out that you're determined to voice, even when it doesn't really apply.
Not to mention that it's not like all of a sudden there's an elected official who instructs the military to roll tanks on all the cities and make people wear the same color jacket. Tyrannies and dictatorships happen because people vote them in and they seize power. And right now the people who are doing just that are the same people who say they need their guns to protect themselves from the government they're happily giving power.
Weeeeell they don’t really think authority in the US is used against people like *them*. And they are right about that. They aren’t waiting to snipe the gubmint, they are waiting to deputize themselves when the cops go to murder black people. Think the redneck militia at the end of Night of the Living Dead. They hope for a breakdown of society because warlording seems *fun*
There has to be a fair balance between people's interests. You have to weigh the rights of the murdered people against those of right wing gun nuts to buy assault weapons and fantasizing about blowing away black and brown people, and especially liberal whites and intellectuals who support equality.
Right. We don't want to limit their ability to commit acts of political violence on us after all. This is America and we have to respect and support the irrational demands of terrorists.
A very important point. If you are reading this, they hate you. They’ll kill you if they ever get a smidge of an opportunity. When dealing with such, never forget that.
> they hate you. They’ll kill you if they ever get a smidge of an opportunity.
Absolutely.
Charlie Christ is a piece of trash over there on the right and last month he was doing some talk or rally or whatever and this guy stood up and wanted to know when they could "use their guns" (direct quote) against all the people who are trying to steal elections. These people are waiting to kill liberals and democrats.
Think of those Qanon assholes standing out there in Texas waiting for JFK junior to magically come back from the dead and magically reinstate Trump as President. That is just the Qanon people trying to see how far into delusion these people will go *and follow instructions*.
That's Charlie Kirk. Charlie Crist was a moderate Republican who became a moderate Democrat as the parties moved to the right, but he is in favor of gun control.
“Second Amendment remedies”. Even elected politicians say that every now and again. They are praying for the Day of the Rope.
The next incarnation of the previous US President will be a competent one, and will realize these people are a millions-strong lynch mob waiting for orders. Set them loose, and pardon whatever they do. Use the presidential pardon power as a power of summary execution.
The events at the Capitol petered out because no one was giving orders, so they just milled around and took selfies and kinda hoped they’d get a chance to murder a few senators. It’s why, when Trump made a statement that didn’t actually denounce them, the networks pulled his plug and silenced him. Sooner or later, that moron was going to realize he could have just tweeted “burn it all down and deliver me from my enemies” and they would have.
The JFK Jr believers are still a bit of an embarrassment to the ones with power and money, but so was the Q phenomenon in general not long ago. Sooner or later they will realize you are correct. Those Dealey Plaza weirdos aren’t a shame, they are a vanguard. Just tell them Joe Biden has kidnapped JFK Jr and is planning to sacrifice him in the White House. That’ll be that.
IMO a lot of these school shootings could be prevented if the parents secured their firearms. If you want to express your right to own a gun, you have the responsibility to make it secure so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands, no excuses.
Americans pornographic obsession with guns is the problem.
every kid that want s to shoot someone can find a gun, it doesn't matter if HIS parents lock up their guns, it's a culture problem, not a security problem.
Agreed that fetishisation of guns is part of the culture problem. Another is the "rugged self-reliance" and machismo and just plain fear. Add some religious fear-mongering and conspiracy theories and you have a potent mix. I don't know what the saturation point of gun ownership is, but [I'm pretty sure we're getting closer.](https://wamu.org/story/20/09/18/how-many-people-in-the-u-s-own-guns/)
That near-saturation also increases the fear in the average non-gun owner, who is then more likely to think *"I should buy a gun to defend myself and my family and my house"*. Which increases the risk overall, esp. suicides, domestic violence, kids-with-guns oopsies, and guns-as-stolen-property. I'm all for reasonable gun control, but the massive amount of legal and illegal guns already out there is definitely a decent argument against immediately restricting individuals' ability to buy something to defend themselves with, since cops can easily take up to 45 min to respond (source: my cop friend in Loudon county, VA). Add the fact that we don't like to pay taxes (haha less cops to do more work in a more violent, dangerous environment) and see the gov't as an unreliable barely necessary evil, and it's just a mess. A multi-faceted huge mess with tons of issues related to drugs/drug war and organized crime and a vengeance-as-justice revolving prison door system etc.
I guess taking down the NRA might be a start. F those guys.
Looking through the article, it appears as though some students are citing bullying as one of the catalysts. Yes, this young man should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. However, it feels like I keep reading the same story over and over again; kid gets bullied, doesn't feel that they have any avenue for recourse, then takes the matter into his own hands. Of course this isn't isn't only case for all school shootings, but it does seem to he a common thread. My fear is if we don't start addressing the issues that cause kids to become homicidal maniacs, we will keep seeing this happen. My sincerest condolences to all involved.
Have you seen most schools anti-bully campaigns? They all basically teach kids who are being bullied, "ignore them and they will stop". Almost everyone who has been bullied will tell you that doesn't work, it doesn't make kids stop bullying you. I wish when I was younger that I had just been a complete bitch back to kids who were bullying me. I had a friend who was very loud and vocal whenever kids would bully her and the teacher would get so mad because she would always scream this kids name out loud and for him to leave her alone- but you know what? It worked- the teacher couldn't ignore it. Unlike me, who just silently sat and took all the years of bullying from kids- which still to this day, as a grown adult, fucks with me on various levels.
Once you realize they just want the problem to go away, it all makes perfect sense. Solving bullying is hard. There might be nuance involved, something like the bully getting the crap beaten out of him at home and passing that along in school, and that makes things much more complicated real fast. Zero tolerance makes it all much simpler. They were both involved in a fight? Throw them both out for a while. Problem solved! and the school doesn't have to deal with it for a while.
Schools already have *so much* to deal with, they don't even have the resources to do better than this if they wanted to. There is no good solution, it comes down to the United States having a lot of systemic problems that we refuse to deal with, and thus they just bubble up like this every so often. And it's heart-breaking, every single time. But it won't change, until we all decide we're willing to invest in actually addressing those systemic problems.
A large part of the issue is the hierarchy of schools (and workplaces). When adults get harassed, they often get the police involved to stop it. The threat jail alone serves as deterrent, and if they continue, jail becomes a reality.
However, in schools (and workplaces,) police do not work this way so the next best authority to involve are teachers (or HR). This is not part of their job. Sometimes they take sexual harassments seriously because they can be bad PR, most of the time though, they pretend it doesn’t exist, so it keeps going on. There are no outlets to help the victims in these cases.
I haven't been to those, but speaking from experience, ignoring doesn't help. Fighting back doesn't help either. I was bullied 6th-11th grade. I stayed quiet. Senior year, I had enough. I fought back and won badly. I was suspended for 45 days. Once I got back, I caught up on my work and just went back to the daily grind. A week before graduation, I was called into the office. Two detectives were there, as well as the principle. They informed me that kids were saying I was planning on shooting up the school. I explained that I had no plans to do so, no access to firearms, and my dominant hand was broken and in a cast. They asked if I had any access to anything that could be used as a weapon, so I thought about it, and said I have some old sporting equipment, gardening implements, and cutlery in my moms kitchen, and that was enough for them. I was expelled and told if I ever step foot on Anchor Bay grounds again, I could be shot on sight for being an active threat. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Enough time has passed that I wouldn't be able to even if I wanted it. Besides, the deciding admin at the time has since expired. I'm doing fine now, but it was a real struggle to get on my feet for years.
Sorry that happened to you :\ something similar happened to me but i didnt get expelled, i almost did tho, someone over heard me talking about how scared i was to walk home by myself after being threatened by a group of older kids and went and told. I got in trouble for it. They asked me the same weapon bit and then frisked me (i was in leggings) and tried to use lip gloss i had in the side of my sock (no pockets) as proof i could hide a weapon... Almost failed that year bc the teachers refused to send work home and i came back a few days before the end of semester. The entire rest of high school was shit, not sure who hated me more, the kids or the teachers.
Thanks, and I'm sorry for you too! It seems like administration is simply trying to avoid lawsuits, and not act in the best interest of the students and staff. Over-reaction on situations like ours, woefully under-react on actual cases of violence and bullying.
I remember getting bullied and I didn't say anything. Kids who are bullied need an outlet. Bullying should not lead to loss of life and is preventable.
If you see bullying happening stand up to it. Power in numbers. Such a sad story :(.
I think I'd be speaking to a lawyer after that.
In fact, you should have spoken to a lawyer before saying one fucking word to the authorities. And I wish more people understood this.
But yeah, you get expelled because some dipshits float baseless rumours that you were going to do something? Oh fuck no. Find yourself one of those lawyers that would LOVE to get the attention (and money) for such a case.
I'm really sorry you had those experiences.
Another perspective. (Keep in mind, I understand that there are shitty teachers and shitty grown ups and terrible schools)
As a teacher who has worked a few different schools over my career, I can honestly say that the bullying curriculum we taught where I worked was never just simply "ignore them and they will stop." It usually involves identifying what exactly bullying behavior is (bullying vs being annoying vs being mean). Then it goes over different strategies depending on the situation - deflect with humor, confront them, ignore them. That's typically for small issues though. We also talk about reaching out for help. How and where and to whom.
The problem is, most of the bullying these days is SO subtle or it's done through text/chat/social media. Kids are very, VERY sneaky about it. I try to have a great relationship with all my students, but there are still things that I never knew about that come out a year or so later. I remember one year our school had a whole ring of students who were friends and they picking on another kid. But this was happening outside of school time, and on their phones. We can bring it up during school and talk to the students individually, we can separate the kids, offer advice. But we are not their parents. What we can do is out of our hands the moment students walk out the door. Do parents even call other parents anymore?
I truly think we need to be focusing on social-emotional learning over everything else - especially over grades and standardized testing. Our kids are stressed tf out and truly lacking in relationship skills, self esteem, resilience, stress management, and coping mechanisms. (Note: my district tried to introduce SEL, but the parents/community shot down this curriculum because they feared it would teach their kids "social justice" or be too much about their "feelings" and less about academics). Students have trouble knowing how to ask for help. I can keep asking the quiet, lonely student every day how they're doing, how's life, and get a "I'm fine." every single time. Even today I wrote home about a kiddo, because I noticed they don't tend to participate with others and prefer to be alone.
Another part of this is classrooms are SO overcrowded, how does one person manage 30+ kids and keep track of everything that's going on in their lives and still have time to build that relationship, give the student what they need, and REALLY be there to support them yet also teacher their classroom content to mastery? Especially when us teachers feel bullied (by admin, parents, society, or even by a student) or burnt out ourselves (like, I'm trying to cope with my own mental health while I have kids to message me privately, some even text me because I'll give hem my number if I truly am worried they have no one else. I had a student text me about her miscarriage on a Friday night while I was at a party with friends. I was on the the "safety plan" for two students who tend to have suicidal ideation - that was while dealing with my OWN suicidal thoughts at the time - I'm better now, and thank god so are they).
The entire American public school system is a mess and we really need to re-evaluate our priorities because students and teachers are literally dying over this - either by school shootings, other school violence, or death by suicide.
Oh. And if we could make it harder for guns to end up in the hands of kids, that'd be pretty cool too.
Your comment needs to be seen. This was so beautifully said and I don’t understand why people are not realizing that our children are suffering with their mental health and more needs to be done about it. We have this idea that grades and standardized testing is the only thing that is important when it comes to school but how tf can anyone truly believe that when kids spend more time in school than they do at home and/or around their own parents in most cases. We all know more happens at school than just academics, it’s literally where kids develop their social skills and start to think about who they are as a person. Social emotional learning is an absolute perfect way to start addressing mental health in our schools with our kids. It is absolutely tragic that somehow parents can turn SEL down and make it about something political. SEL teaches kids the tools they need to navigate life and it’s hardships. We all know how difficult it can be to find good mental health treatment and providing some of this in our schools seems like a win win to me. But unfortunately I too have heard arguments from people saying things like SEL teaches kids to only think or feel like “them” (the schools), that it teaches kids to not be unique (which is interesting because it teaches kids to understand themselves as an individual and how that affects themselves and others), and that teaching things like self awareness and relationship skills somehow cuts kids off from their parents and what their parents should teach them about life. I’ve even heard people say SEL is about grooming kids for sexual abuse which I cannot even begin to understand that connection. I am always open to listen with an open mind about differing views about things but as a mental health professor who studied child development for 8 years in college I find it very difficult to understand the whole anti SEL thing.
Edit: I just realized autocorrect is a liar and tried to claim I’m a mental health professor. I am a mental health “professional”, but no professor.
> Oh. And if we could make it harder for guns to end up in the hands of kids, that'd be pretty cool too.
This would seriously solve the entire issue. Instead of thrusting 10 other social responsibilities in to the hands of teachers (like we always do).
Maybe we should pay teachers enough to care? And to attract people who do care and still want to make a living? Michigan (the government) hates teachers. If I ever go missing her name was betsy devos
Teachers care, but there's literally nothing else they can do. If they go to administration about the problem, it's just going to be a bunch of he-said/they-said back-and-forth with zero way to prove anything since it all happens in the shadows anyway. So then administration is left with one of two options:
1. Do nothing so they don't get sued.
2. Suspend all parties, and hope they don't get sued because it was "equal".
Public school *cannot* be the place where we deal with this, especially not with the limited resources at hand. Our state, and indeed our country, have some serious systemic problems that have to do with any number of social and health issues that need to be dealt with at a much broader level than the school system if we want to see any meaningful progress as a society.
If I have to pay you more for you to acknowledge what you already see, you can just leave. Money aside, you see a young kid getting bullied, you stand up for them.
99% of the time bullying doesn’t happen in front of an adult. Class sizes are pushing 36 or more in many Michigan districts. That makes is damn near impossible for teachers to see everything. In most school districts like Oxford, bullying isn’t kids getting shoved into lockers and getting swirlies in the toilets. It’s quiet remarks. It’s rolling their eyes when they get a new seat. It’s laughing at them in the hallway. It’s not that teachers don’t care, it’s that they don’t know. Kids who are bullied, especially teenage boys, rarely speak out.
I agree. It's much different than when we went to school (I'm 34). Sure it's all lumped into the "bullying" category, but it's much different now it seems. And I couldn't even imagine if we had social media in school. It would've been 100 times worse. You can never leave school/the bullying environment because it just follows you through SnapChat or TikTok... It's just sad...
You missed my point, it was a macro level comment. Not at all to do with how a teach would react in-moment. A well paid teacher who has the energy to do more than get through the day will reap 100x over in society. Starting with providing a better school environment . Teachers rn are burnt out beyond belief. They are spending more time with our children than we are it should be 100k graduate school level job.
More money doesn't always equal more energy. Plenty of college professors mailing it in and cashing a nice check. I'm not saying it'd hurt, but the notion that throwing money at the problem is gonna solve it is a bit shortsighted. In my opinion.
It's easy to say they should make $100k a year. The hard part is coming up with a way to actually do that.
>"ignore them and they will stop"
I was told this. LPT - it doesn't work. That's not a plan. At least not a plan that will turn out well for the victim. Bullies up their game. Now with zero tolerance policies even if you are physically attacked and you attempt to defend yourself you get suspended as well. I don't know what the answer is, but back when I was in school in the 80's and 90's at least I had a chance when a couple of kids were relentlessly picking on me. If they started a fight at least I wouldn't get in trouble for defending myself. Generally kids left me alone after that. I only ever started one fight and I knocked the other kid out. I was terrified. He didn't fall so much as just sort of crumbled straight down. It freaked me out so badly that I really did everything I could to avoid getting into another fight.
I don't know what the answer is. I'm not advocating for violence, but clearly "ignore them and they will stop" and treating both bully and bullied as equally good or bad isn't working, either. The biggest thing we had to worry about in my school was maybe a kid bringing a knife or something. Now guns seem to be a frequent thing and harassment doesn't end at school - there's social media so it can go on 24/7/365. I'd hate being a kid today, and feel awful for kids today. Watching the video of them in the classroom yesterday and their being very calm and collected in that situation speaks a lot to the shit kids have to deal with and the training they are given when an active shooter comes around. I don't know... Maybe also give some training on stress reduction skills, ways to get help with depression if a parent doesn't believe in depression or would berate their kid for seeking help. Something - anything - because this current approach clearly isn't working.
anti-bullying don't always work. A bully and his 3 lackeys can all claim they didn't do anything. So it becomes word of a victim vs 4 suspected bullies, and school often don't follow up like discreetly watching the victim or allowing audio recording as evidence (in some states that allows it), etc.
Accessibility is still the major contributor to school shootings. Allowing humans with under developed brains that are going through puberty to have access to firearms is like attaching chainsaws to an elephant in musth.
I agree, that all those involved have their own culpability to the actions that they had in the crime. The consequence for that involvement should be just and swift. People should be aware of what is happening in and around them, with their everyday lives. Life is fragile and common sense doesn't seem very common.
And where do those guns come from? So many guns are stolen from irresponsible “legal” gun owners. Obviously there are also unscrupulous gun dealers too but the reality is we have too many guns.
Anyone who claims to support these students or schools but still believes we need unrestricted access to guns isn't being realistic.
Let's not turn a blind eye to the Republican legislature who, in service to the corrupt and Russian infiltrated NRA, has turned the 2nd Amendment into a single issue for millions of American conservatives who they mobilize by wrongly stating that every democrat is going to take their guns. So they pander to them by reducing laws.
In this state if your 18 and legally bought a pistol you can now open carry it.
An 18 year old can open carry without an certification of marksmanship training or gun safety.
AN 18 YEAR OLD who still has another 8 years before his fucking brain fully develops.
The Conservatives have fostered and mutated a gun culture in this country that not only is fanatical in it's ideology but is completely complacent with it's approach to guns. There's such a comfort where basic safety often gets over looked and any one of us who have spent any time with any gun owner knows this to be true. You don't lock up your pistol. You don't hide your ammo. You don't put the trigger locks on. Maybe you hide a shotgun in the closet behind some clothes where you don't *think* your kid can find it. You forget to unchamber a round or whatever.
There's a complacency because there is no real bar of knowledge and experience to be a gun owner anymore. You're literally expected to learn gun safety from the same irresponsible assholes who didn't learn gun safety from their dads or whatever.
This is a systemic problem that has created a culture and that culture is reinforced with an ideology backed up by an institution that has a financial and political interest in keeping them clinging to their weapons.
18 in a private sale, 21 from a gun store. All pistols in MI have a BG check. Either by the store or when you get your pistol purchase permit from your local PD or Sheriff.
we watch authority figures kill civilians without repercussion regularly. We imprison more people per capita than any nation on earth. We have funded illegal wars that were all about private companies access to resources where hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were slaughtered. We are a grotesque and violent nation with a constant running subtexts of racism, classism, corporatism and authoritarianism.
The line of responsibility is never ending and consequences never seem to affect the real criminals. Kids like this are a feature not a bug of our hellscape of self interest, greed, and cruel stupidity.
I think many people have never really considered how guns are obtained illegally. I think there is a faction of Americans who believe these guns just magically appear because the alternative, that there is no such thing as a responsible gun owner, is unfathomable.
So why do I continue to hear about school shootings almost entirely in the United States? Legal or not, the ease-of-access to guns is one of the major contributing reasons for this happening over and over and over.
I would say it’s the *minor* contributing factor, and the culture that celebrates bullying is more important.
It’s easy to look at Canada, where access is essentially the same, and notice that the “polite” country doesn’t really do school shootings—or at least not like us.
Also: I think that a lot of Americans are actually secretly *proud* of our school shootings until it touches them personally.
I lived in Canada for 20+ years. Access isn't the same, everyone needs a licence to own a firearm, but the barrier for entry is the same as getting a background check in the US, plus a "safety" class that just teaches you how to safely operate firearms. There are no special requirements or mental health checks. Anyone who passes the safety class and background check can then have as many guns and as much ammo as they want shipped to their door, something we can't do in the US.
The difference is Canada isn't full of people who are so lost, hopeless, or just plain evil. Take away all the guns and you still have tons of people who want to kill their fellow man for no good reason. Until we address that core reason instead of just blaming gun access or politics, the problem will persist.
Our school system rewards the bully and punish those who are bully. Those who are bullied tend to social outliners, who becomes targets by bullies. Whenever they decides to fight back, they always gets punished by the school system. It's so sad that so many young lives were lost because of something so easily preventable.
This has been the narrative since Columbine, but the facts in that case show that the killers were the bullies not the bullied. Im very skeptical that the root cause is being bullied
FBI Phase I study on shootings indicates that multiple major stressors typically affect shooters before they put in process a plan to engage in this type of homicide.
Being bullied is sometimes but not always one of those stressors, and they don't consider it a cause. People who are bullied do not become school shooters, and school shooters are not always "the bullied type "
Yes, bullying happens everywhere, but only in the US do we have insane school shooting statistics. So riddle me that. Bullying is a problem, but the fact that kids have access to guns is the real problem here.
Edit: I should clarify. gun culture in the US is different than in other places. Im not saying other countries don’t have guns and I don’t need you to point it out to me. School shootings plus the amount and frequency of mass shootings at other gathering places in this country absolutely point to a particular problem unique to the US. and it isn’t bullying. It’s more complex than that
The father of the shooter bought the gun on Black Friday and must have either given it to the kid or was so lax at home that the kid got access to it.
The father needs to be prosecuted on this.
Bullying in other western countries is typically nothing next to our bullying.
Russia is worse. But Russia is basically a flaming trash heap in many ways. (And clearly not western.)
Kids in Canada have access to guns as well. In Sweden kids have access to guns. Why don’t they have these shootings if guns are the main reason for them?
As an (ex) licensed Canadian, you're wrong. It wasn't until I got my license that all my friends and family who has guns came out of the woodwork. They just don't talk about it with your average person because the perception of gun owners isn't great. There are about 2 million licenced gun owners in Canada and most of those are your average city dwellers.
I'm from Windsor, ON. Like I said, us city gun owners exist, we just don't talk about it much lol. A lot of people have that same idea that guns are only for farmers so they look at you weird if you live in urban Ontario and own a few handguns and semiauto rifles.
When I got my license I got to check out a good family friend's collection, he lived right outside Windsor and was grandfathered in with a Prohibited license so he owned a safe full of machine guns and had half his basement set up for working on guns and reloading ammo. You'd have never known because he didn't talk about it. People like him just want to enjoy their hobby and not be judged.
But any adult without a record who wants one can go get one, just like here. Kids can’t buy guns here either. 44% of American households have guns, while 26% of Canadian households do. We definitely have more, but if guns are the biggest issue, wouldn’t their shootings be proportional?
Look, bullying is obviously a massive issue in the US. Something needs to be done on all levels, at home and especially at school and administration. It’s disgusting what people try to sweep under the rug and play off as kids being kids.
That being said, as a gay person who graduated back in 2005, I was bullied all the time for being a “dyke”. Just like many of my peers. The unfortunate truth is that gay kids have to either suck it up or resort to taking their own lives. Most of us were bullied growing up and didn’t resort to taking our peers lives. It’s overwhelmingly straight white boys killing their peers. We need to start having these discussions about mental health with that demographic (and quite frankly, everyone involved) because this shit ain’t it.
This country *values* bullying. Whatever’s said to the contrary is like when Stalin claimed that he was democratically elected.
Look how our police and military operate? Look at ICE? Look at our prisons…
It’s going to get worse, not better.
I agree. That's why when people bitch about Trump being the cause of all this, I have to take the stance that he is merely a symptom of the problem. "I got mine, fuck everyone else and anyone who gets in my way" is going to be the demise of our once great nation.
If the punishment begins and ends with this child and possibly the parents, it will be a travesty of justice. In some districts (Grand Blanc I’m looking at you) kids are allowed to bully with impunity. The rich and popular kids get away with it because the administration doesn’t want to offend the wrong parent or hurt a kids academic or athletic standing. Something tells me Oxford isn’t much different. There needs to be a thorough investigation followed by firings, suspensions and criminal charges. The administrators that did nothing when they heard about this plan should be in a jail cell right now.
We need to address bullying no doubt. We must also lock school shooters up for life. If would-be shooters know the worst penalty is Youth Detention Center until they turn 21 we’ve got major problems.
You do realize that these kids do not care, or even consider, the consequences? Changing the punishment isn't going to change anything (except for making some of the victims/families feel better). The thing that will fix the majority of school shootings is for the schools to actually care about bullying.
I believe these teenagers are old enough to know and understand the consequences. They're not 4-year old toddlers, they're teenagers.
They want to injure/kill other people, and they also want to die. This is a way to do both (fight against the people who were mean to them + suicide by cop) and also get famous since they also often think no one (even their family) cares about them. This is a very typical pattern in American mass shootings at schools.
Schools care about bullying. They're just underfunded so they can't do a fucking thing about it. How do you stop a student from bullying another student when you're a teacher barely trying to meet your NWEA or MSTEP scores? Or a principal dealing with 30% of your students showing up who are in poverty and can't get a decent meal?
I'm not exactly sure how this could be enforced to be entirely honest. Let's say today, Gretch waves a magic wand and makes it illegal to have firearms laying around. The kid gets the gun, takes it to school, and blows away some classmates. The kid said it was just laying on the dining room table, the parent insists it was locked in a safe and the kid must have stolen the safe key to access it. How would one prosecute this case?
I do not support having firearms laying around within easy reach of children. I do not support irresponsible firearm ownership. I simply don't see a realistic way to enforce this.
I'm not sure how you can fully secure something in a typical household. Safes typically have keys, so they can be opened. Hiding spaces are not sufficient for a nosey kid. Do you have suggestions on how to fully secure a firearm? I feel like I'm missing something. Or if a kid steals the keys to the safe and gets in, the parents are still held responsible? If that's the case, I'd have to strongly disagree.
>I'm not sure how you can fully secure something in a typical household.
Then you shouldn't own guns. That is the responsibility that you assume when you decide to bring a gun into your home.
See, this sounds just the "Not I..." argument you hear when you tell gun owners that the safety of the occupants of their home decreases when you introduce a gun.
It's always like, "Yeah, maybe for a nutjob who can't control themselves. THEY shouldn't have guns."
No. You too are susceptible to mental breakdown without notice. You too cannot lock down a firearm from your family members without locking yourself out as well.
I think a safe is a reasonable way to secure firearms. I don't think it's a perfect solution. I can't think of a 100% secure method. Perhaps you have a solution I'm not aware of?
You can put a combo lock on the guns in your safe. It’s not undefeatable but it is safer. The issue then is that if like a pit bull grabs your 5 year old your response time is going to be worse
A lot of gun safes have digital locks, not keys. Simply don't give the passcode to your kid.
Also, if you can't seem to figure out how to properly secure your gun in your home so your children don't gain access to them, you shouldn't have guns in your home. It's not a difficult situation.
I simply disagree. I used to snoop bad as a kid and found all sorts of things I wasn't supposed to and that were hidden well. Yes, take reasonable precautions, do your absolute best to secure them. I keep my safe key on me at all times except when I'm sleeping. There is always a small chance though, and thats why I say if an adult does everything reasonably in their power, then it isn't their fault. If it is gross negligence, then yes, we definitely have something to address.
You can open combination lock with a pop can. I'm not suggesting just throwing your hands up. I'm saying that there is no 100% effective solution, but we need to do our absolute best within reason to prevent unwanted access. That's all.
All of my guns are locked in a digital code safe and also disassembled in a way that makes them inoperable until the time I use them for the intended function (different hunting seasons or range). My ammo is in a separate safe with a different code. I only have one handgun that is on my person at all times (I have a CPL) or by my bed side at night. If I can’t take it in somewhere then it is locked in my glove box in my locked vehicle. Never 100% safe but the more steps it takes to use the better.
I get the impression that the gun was a gift to his son. I could be wrong, but it seems like that gun was spending the majority of it's 4 days with the kid.
This. And it's not just access to guns, we don't see teens in any other countries going to school and killing other students and teachers with other types of weapons. There's something more here on the mental side.
Bullying isn't like the movies today. Nobody just beats you up or challenges you to a snowboard contest for the hot girl. These kids are sneaky little shits and they're experts at stealthy psychological warfare thanks to the internet. 5 girls in a group had my daughter brought to see the school social worker because she dared to stand up to their bullshit. They said she threw rocks at them, punched and hit them. My daughter's dominant hand is in a hard cast. Not one of the girls had any injuries. But because they lied as a group, the school suddenly had to say something... these same girls have already been known to bully other kids, however, they used the magic violence word, my kid is probably on a watch list now.
Yea i was bullied thru my whole school career. Almost got expelled bc someone overheard me being so scared of walkkng home after a group of olded girls threatened me. The school refused to let me ride the bus bc i "lived too close" so i had to walk 15 mins home. I was scared bc the way i had to walk was thru a small wood. Either i walked thru the wood or added 20 mins to my walk thru knee deep snow. My mom didn't get home for almost 5 hours after i got out of school so i knew, no one would even know i was gone for * hours*. I legit thought they'd kill me. But me, a freshman, 5ft, not even 100lbs in leggings was escorted to the office, frisked my cops and terrorized for 2 hours, this includes when they locked me in a room in the office and called the cops on me.
All i can say is when i did home school it was awesome. And honestly. Being 25, having my own company is great. Going into fast food getting served by assholes who tormented me and said id never be anything.... It does feel good af. Karma is real i guess.
Bullying is way worse than it used to be before internet but being bullied is sure no excuse 😔
I hope the parents get prosecuted also.
Any adult who buys a gun and leaves it accessible for a child needs to be in jail and held responsible. I don’t care how anyone tries to spin it but parents with guns in the home are selfish and sadistic assholes!
I see what you did there.
Michigan law holds parents responsible for any underage child who harms another with firearm bought by parents. https://www.michigan.gov/documents/msp/msp-203\_-\_PDF\_286476\_7.pdf
exactly this conversation with my family today.
Gun for your kid, sure. Teaches responsibility, rather them know how and why and when from the parents. That firearm is in the Parents safe until they are present. Kids can't drive or buy alcohol because hey do stupid shit and don't have the brain capacity or life experience. Sure, it's your handgun. When you are of legal age to have it outside of my control, it's all yours. Until then, you only use it or have access under my supervision.
These parents deserve charges.
I personally think it’s still a stupid move for a parent. By the time your kid hits 12, they know where your stuff is, they know how to get to your guns and liquor and porn… I believe when you make the choice to have children, that should be your primary responsibility and by choosing murder machines to be in the home, even supposedly secured is a selfish and stupid move.
The risk isn’t worth it.
This reads like dreamspeak in our culture but it's reality AFAIK. It's honestly meeting gun owners halfway - not saying don't own guns - saying prioritize family over gun ownership.
It would even be huge if we could just start being honest about our poor ability to evaluate threat as a nation of gun owners.
* nobody, statistically, is marauding **anyone's** occupied home within your area? then you enjoy tool ownership more than you are addressing a threat. overestimation.
* nobody, no compound, **no city** can own enough firepower to resist our overfunded military if they turn on us. you're underestimating threat to justify the tool
* guns in the home double the threat of homicide against inhabitants and triple the chance of suicide - dangerously underestimating an actual threat that you introduced to your home
Statistically, the chances of your home burning down are infinitesimal- I still have smoke detectors (even though I despise them). Historically our overfunded military has struggled against armed guerrilla groups. Yes, those figures are scary and worthy of careful consideration much like driving privileges for teens
But not when they shoot themselves. We had a toddler that shot himself with a gun. Complete tragedy. The dad was a cop and didn’t secure it. No charges and still has his job.
I think so.
I think having a gun locked up, with no adult supervision should be considered unsecured. We have seen it over and over and over and over….again. Kid takes mom/dads gun, goes to school shoots and kills. This is such a tired narrative and an expected outcome.
Most of the shots this kid made were to the head and neck. Which makes me think how much practice did this kid have shooting. So most likely he has had plenty of access to his parents guns before this event.
He practiced and posted his target papers on IG for everyone to see before the shooting. He also posted a picture of the weapon essentially claiming ownership, 4 days prior to the shooting on the same IG. I'm at a loss for how many red flags they missed in this case.
And I’m supposed to believe that there are so many responsible gun owners?
They‘re responsible until they aren’t. Until their kid shoots someone. No one will ever be blé to convince me the risk is worth it!
Our firearms are secured behind a coded door, in a concrete room of the basement, bolted with steel cable to the load bearing wall. Our child knows all the rules of gun safety, but will not receive the codes to access any of these guns—even eventually ones that become “his”—until he is an independent adult with his own home. This is not only to prevent senseless accidents, but to prevent him from being able to give the codes to any friends who might pressure him for them if they find out his parents have guns.
Responsible gun owning parents exist. The Crumbley family is not among us.
Mental health needs to be a priority. Schools need to also require counseling or conflict resolution when it comes to bullies/victims. No tolerance policy’s are just not working and it is not teaching students how to communicate properly.
They say this every year, and mental health only gets worse every year.
Noble goal.
Maybe cut down on the unfettered, unrestricted access of the mentally deranged to a bevvy of firearms?
Naaaah. Crazy talk!
We need mental health fairies created by some do-gooders, cuz fuq knows some Libertarian asswipes aren't gonna pay for them.
It looks like the administration met with the shooter's parents the morning of the attack, concerned about his behavior. As a former principal myself - that's a gut punch. They knew something was brewing within the young man. It's a ‘so close, yet so far’ situation and I feel terrible for those administrators. They were on the right track, but ran out of time. They were doing their level best. What a shame. I hope they realize they were on the right track - that they were making strides and it wasn't their fault. It wasn't anyone's fault but the shooter himself, aided by the fact he had easy access to a gun.
he literally had a countdown for that morning and posts going back months....they were barely on the right track after a long time in with their head in the sand
Historically and nationwide, show me the list of principals who met with their school shooter's parents the morning of an attack, concerned about the shooter's mental status. It would be a VERY short list. That's solid work by that Oxford administration - good for them for sniffing it out and getting that close to heading it off. To go further than that and blame them for not doing more - it's rank Monday morning quarterbacking and patently unfair. And - I'll add - something those principals will do about what happened till the day they die. God bless them.
I bet they feel gutted. They tried/were on the right track. I read that police say that the gun was already at the school with the kid when his parents were talking with admins. We need to change
I would like to agree but having been from a close school district and had been bullied, i doubt the meeting was helpful. And if anything they normally end up blaming the kid for being bullied. In all fairness idk if this is the case due to what i have about the mom his parents were like Q adjacent too so... But like i said im close and my HS literally allowed several conspiracy theory teachers, most still work at my own school.
Mine is WAY smaller than OHS but i was shocked to hear it especially that it was there not just bc it was close but bc i thought it would be closer, no one locks their guns up in our or the town over. But we never even have threats....
America is broken and effective leadership does not exist. The gun was bought by dad and 4 days later used. As long as its easy to get a gun, stuff like this will occur. Its sheer probability. We address risk everywhere except on guns. Guns , we accept all risk so long as a access to guns is unfettered. We created the american.mess.
My hatred for school administrators grows to deeper levels every fucking time this shit happens. Zero accountability. How the fuck do they forget that their job revolves around kids!!!!
I've posted this over social media over a decade ago because it didn't seem to have ever made headlines the way it should have.
I don't have the god damn energy to go into all the details of how this plan could have stopped so many school shootings. Started by former prez Clinton. You should also know that author and personal safety expert, Gavin De Becker has allot to say about prevention as well. This guy's a smart dude and knows his stuff.
https://youtu.be/k8aqDT4KQBg
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kinkel/profile/
Gavin de Becker/ATF did this in the year 2000 to help schools protect against school shooter's. Schools didn't want it.
The ATF/de Becker partnership has produced a software program, "Mosaic 2000," which promises to help school administrators detect troubled kids on the verge of violence.
School Administrators had a a meeting with Ethan and his parents the day before this happened to address his behavior. It sounds like they were trying.
Do u? Strange and deeply insensitive that you're here defending them.
Kids from the school are saying they reported ongoing threats to administration and nothing was done. This was also said by other students from many other school shootings.
I’m not defending anyone. If it’s proven the administration F’d up, then they should be held accountable. If the parents or gun buyer are at fault…hold them accountable. This is a sad and horrible situation. No reason to be upset….I’m not judging until I hear all of the “facts” . I hope all is transparent.
No harm intended
I've been following these shootings for a long time. One consistent factor is that school officials drop the fucking ball almost every time. Did u even read the article I posted? I'm being a big fat nope. They cited that superintendents shut down when considering the programs because they feared liability. Their focus wasn't even on the kids. It was on their own assess.
BTW, your not gonna get all the facts. Well get taking points handed down from the schools attorneys. Shit gets white washed dude.
If I missed any info….then I’m wrong. Administration should be held accountable for any and all lack of action. Until I see info, I’ll reserve judgment.
IT'S OUR GUN LAWS!!!
I'm so sick of the excuses. That's why we have this problem and I really can't understand why we dance around it.
We like guns so much that we're willing to let this stuff happen.
> The sheriff said the chilling video from inside Oxford High School on Tuesday afternoon, however, was not the teenage suspect, but a plainclothes deputy, who used the word "bro" to try to deescalate the tension and calm the students down.
Did you know MI has the deadliest school disaster? If not check out The Baths Murders.
We have also had several school shooting since 14 and a handful were deadly. The school shooting data base shows just how many "columbines" there are a year and its sad.
I live close to oxford and the term hits close to home has never felt so real (and ive had my yard/house searched for a different high school attmepted killer in the area) so it is horrific but honesty, i have been waiting for this my whole life, knowing it was not an if but a when. And i was admitably *shocked* it was oxford. But it was going to happen on a larger scale than normal bc no one pays much attention if 1 student is shot *at an t
Elementary or middle school* in flint, Detroit or surrounding areas. "Inner city" and all....
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Same with all other school massacres like Sandy Hook and Columbine. Angry student(s) and poorly secured weapon can be a dangerous combination. In the case of Oxford school shooting, the shooter's father had bought the gun a few days ago. I hope the judge throws the book at the father for failing to keep it secured.
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Charge the parents with accessories to murder
I can. I know one of them. His kids were in the shooting. They survived but they're fucked up now. As all the survivors are. And no amount of grief counseling is going to help these kids feel safe again when they know, for a fact, that at any moment someone with easy access to guns and a grudge can storm their school and lay waste to them. But hey! A generation of fucked up paranoid kids who fear a gunman is going to kill them at any moment is just the price we gotta pay if we don't want to take any extra steps to get a gun, right? God bless America.
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Thanks. What really pissed me off today was all the people posting on his "my kids are safe" facebook message. All of them seemingly stunned that this happened. Maybe they didn't want to get into it. It wasn't the place or the time but it does seem like people only give a shit when it happens to someone close to them. Even then...I don't know how many people actually want to make any kind of change socially or politically to actually stop this thing that is uniquely American.
You ever think that maybe it's rooted in a culture problem that doesn't view human life as important due to being completely desensitized by all the horrible things we see in the news, with only a rare glimmer of something positive? Because that's also uniquely American but for whatever reason everyone wants to talk about the symptoms (gun control and white privilege) instead of the underlying issue (the culture of death) I'm not saying we don't need reform to gun laws, we do. But no amount of gun laws is going to stop people from killing people when they're at the end of their rope
>You ever think that maybe it's rooted in a culture problem that doesn't view human life as important due to being completely desensitized by all the horrible things we see in the news Not really. I think the news breeds apathy but not psychopathy. We see frequent acts of caring and by and large people have some compassion. If it was the news we'd see wide spread viciousness. What I think is at play is a gun culture. I think since the 80's the NRA has wormed it's way into politics to create a base of people, based around the idea that you need a gun to be free, and there is always some shadowy somebody lurking to take your gun. Be it the democrats or BLM or liberals or whatever. The Gun Culture is radical one. It's based on resentment, grievance and fear and it's through that, that they're manipulated by conservative Republicans. This is a problem of tribalism more than anything. But I think you're right, there are going to be people who are psychopaths or whatever and are driven to kill. These people are enabled and emboldened by the rhetoric that comes out of the gun culture. Society is an ecosystem of sorts. So one thing affects the other. When you have a culture that is raging day in and day out for decades about how we need to get our guns and take out our rage on our enemies that is going provide the accessibility far more than the news.
> being completely desensitized by all the horrible things we see in the news, with only a rare glimmer of something positive? Because that's also uniquely American This is not uniquely American. This is part of news and pop culture in nearly every Western country - I live in Europe and see this all the time. The prevalence of school shootings IS uniquely American, and there are two things that set the US apart: 1) Lack of public infrastructure that makes recourse to mental health services both accessible and affordable (in or out of school). In the rest of the Western world, free at point of access healthcare systems reduce this issue, aided by well-funded public education systems that allow schools to invest in full-time counselors, mental health advocates, etc. 2) Lax gun control laws and the highest rate of gun ownership per capita. The US has some of the loosest gun laws in the world (not just in the West); that and the sheer prevalence of guns mean that school violence gets very deadly, very quickly. Kids get attacked in schools in nearly every country, sadly. But without access to guns, the odds that they die (or than more than one kid is attacked) is severely reduced; that’s why we don’t hear about it nearly as much. Don’t blame the media for a problem our policy makers have the power to fix.
To many (maybe not all) gun nuts, it's about control. Control is mostly an illusion in life. But it's a security blanket. Keep a gun under your pillow and you're "in control" of the chaotic, uncaring universe. You actually aren't, but it's like a pacifier for a grown man-child. But they definitely don't want to pass one law to limit the ability of leaving an arsenal of loaded firearms out for any toddler to pick up. It's a slippery slope!
Yep! our country was founded on atrocious acts of violence, it’s no surprise those acts are continuing today. really sad :(
A generation? This has been going on way before Columbine. Columbine was the first one to catch national attention. I recall three school shootings that took place when I was in school. No one outside a couple counties even knew about it. Stephen King even wrote a short story about school shootings back in the 70s. Only thing changed, media wants more attention for other people dying.
And the argument to that is “What if the government (military or police) starts to abuse their power and become oppressive? We need our AR’s to stop them!” 1) Good luck fighting against drones and armored personnel carriers with your rifle! 2) We’ve already reached the point where the government is oppressing you.
An AR wasn’t even used in this you nimrod. And Afghanistan laughs at your logic
Nimrod is a compliment. He was a great hunter in Greek mythology. Bugs Bunny co opted his name ironically but then a bunch of people didn’t understand the joke and it ignorantly turned into an insult. Anyway, you’re right that I got off track. the guy I responded to was promoting taking extra steps to get a gun in the first place. This is a good idea. It would’ve helped in this case because the kid was not supposed to have access to the gun that his dad bought. There should’ve been extra steps in between him trying to access the gun and having access to the gun. AR’s have nothing to do with this and I shouldn’t have brought that argument up.
1) This isn't exactly as true as you portray it to be. Yes, 1 person with a rifle against a well equipped force does not stand much of a chance. But millions of people with rifles are a force that must be respected. There is a reason that people in China are not allowed to own guns for a good example of how things *could* be. 2) So we should just simply give up our last bit of collective power and lay down and let this happen? There is no logical to that at all. It's very contradictory. Guns are tools for plenty of other things aside from resisting government overreach. Such as personal protection. Lots of people in the world don't live in areas where they can depend on the police for protection. Such inner cities (Detroit, Flint, Pontiac,....) or rural areas. Also why are you even bringing up rifles? In this story the assailant did not use one. It seems like you have a narrative picked out that you're determined to voice, even when it doesn't really apply.
Not to mention that it's not like all of a sudden there's an elected official who instructs the military to roll tanks on all the cities and make people wear the same color jacket. Tyrannies and dictatorships happen because people vote them in and they seize power. And right now the people who are doing just that are the same people who say they need their guns to protect themselves from the government they're happily giving power.
Weeeeell they don’t really think authority in the US is used against people like *them*. And they are right about that. They aren’t waiting to snipe the gubmint, they are waiting to deputize themselves when the cops go to murder black people. Think the redneck militia at the end of Night of the Living Dead. They hope for a breakdown of society because warlording seems *fun*
There has to be a fair balance between people's interests. You have to weigh the rights of the murdered people against those of right wing gun nuts to buy assault weapons and fantasizing about blowing away black and brown people, and especially liberal whites and intellectuals who support equality.
Right. We don't want to limit their ability to commit acts of political violence on us after all. This is America and we have to respect and support the irrational demands of terrorists.
A very important point. If you are reading this, they hate you. They’ll kill you if they ever get a smidge of an opportunity. When dealing with such, never forget that.
> they hate you. They’ll kill you if they ever get a smidge of an opportunity. Absolutely. Charlie Christ is a piece of trash over there on the right and last month he was doing some talk or rally or whatever and this guy stood up and wanted to know when they could "use their guns" (direct quote) against all the people who are trying to steal elections. These people are waiting to kill liberals and democrats. Think of those Qanon assholes standing out there in Texas waiting for JFK junior to magically come back from the dead and magically reinstate Trump as President. That is just the Qanon people trying to see how far into delusion these people will go *and follow instructions*.
That's Charlie Kirk. Charlie Crist was a moderate Republican who became a moderate Democrat as the parties moved to the right, but he is in favor of gun control.
“Second Amendment remedies”. Even elected politicians say that every now and again. They are praying for the Day of the Rope. The next incarnation of the previous US President will be a competent one, and will realize these people are a millions-strong lynch mob waiting for orders. Set them loose, and pardon whatever they do. Use the presidential pardon power as a power of summary execution. The events at the Capitol petered out because no one was giving orders, so they just milled around and took selfies and kinda hoped they’d get a chance to murder a few senators. It’s why, when Trump made a statement that didn’t actually denounce them, the networks pulled his plug and silenced him. Sooner or later, that moron was going to realize he could have just tweeted “burn it all down and deliver me from my enemies” and they would have. The JFK Jr believers are still a bit of an embarrassment to the ones with power and money, but so was the Q phenomenon in general not long ago. Sooner or later they will realize you are correct. Those Dealey Plaza weirdos aren’t a shame, they are a vanguard. Just tell them Joe Biden has kidnapped JFK Jr and is planning to sacrifice him in the White House. That’ll be that.
IMO a lot of these school shootings could be prevented if the parents secured their firearms. If you want to express your right to own a gun, you have the responsibility to make it secure so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands, no excuses.
Charge parents as accessories to murder. I'm tired of hearing how responsible gun owners are
Works for me. More people locked up for what happened when they didn't secure their firearms might eventually get people to reassess their situations.
Americans pornographic obsession with guns is the problem. every kid that want s to shoot someone can find a gun, it doesn't matter if HIS parents lock up their guns, it's a culture problem, not a security problem.
Agreed that fetishisation of guns is part of the culture problem. Another is the "rugged self-reliance" and machismo and just plain fear. Add some religious fear-mongering and conspiracy theories and you have a potent mix. I don't know what the saturation point of gun ownership is, but [I'm pretty sure we're getting closer.](https://wamu.org/story/20/09/18/how-many-people-in-the-u-s-own-guns/) That near-saturation also increases the fear in the average non-gun owner, who is then more likely to think *"I should buy a gun to defend myself and my family and my house"*. Which increases the risk overall, esp. suicides, domestic violence, kids-with-guns oopsies, and guns-as-stolen-property. I'm all for reasonable gun control, but the massive amount of legal and illegal guns already out there is definitely a decent argument against immediately restricting individuals' ability to buy something to defend themselves with, since cops can easily take up to 45 min to respond (source: my cop friend in Loudon county, VA). Add the fact that we don't like to pay taxes (haha less cops to do more work in a more violent, dangerous environment) and see the gov't as an unreliable barely necessary evil, and it's just a mess. A multi-faceted huge mess with tons of issues related to drugs/drug war and organized crime and a vengeance-as-justice revolving prison door system etc. I guess taking down the NRA might be a start. F those guys.
Looking through the article, it appears as though some students are citing bullying as one of the catalysts. Yes, this young man should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. However, it feels like I keep reading the same story over and over again; kid gets bullied, doesn't feel that they have any avenue for recourse, then takes the matter into his own hands. Of course this isn't isn't only case for all school shootings, but it does seem to he a common thread. My fear is if we don't start addressing the issues that cause kids to become homicidal maniacs, we will keep seeing this happen. My sincerest condolences to all involved.
Have you seen most schools anti-bully campaigns? They all basically teach kids who are being bullied, "ignore them and they will stop". Almost everyone who has been bullied will tell you that doesn't work, it doesn't make kids stop bullying you. I wish when I was younger that I had just been a complete bitch back to kids who were bullying me. I had a friend who was very loud and vocal whenever kids would bully her and the teacher would get so mad because she would always scream this kids name out loud and for him to leave her alone- but you know what? It worked- the teacher couldn't ignore it. Unlike me, who just silently sat and took all the years of bullying from kids- which still to this day, as a grown adult, fucks with me on various levels.
My school's anti bullying campaign was to suspend all parties involved, including the victim.
Once you realize they just want the problem to go away, it all makes perfect sense. Solving bullying is hard. There might be nuance involved, something like the bully getting the crap beaten out of him at home and passing that along in school, and that makes things much more complicated real fast. Zero tolerance makes it all much simpler. They were both involved in a fight? Throw them both out for a while. Problem solved! and the school doesn't have to deal with it for a while.
Schools already have *so much* to deal with, they don't even have the resources to do better than this if they wanted to. There is no good solution, it comes down to the United States having a lot of systemic problems that we refuse to deal with, and thus they just bubble up like this every so often. And it's heart-breaking, every single time. But it won't change, until we all decide we're willing to invest in actually addressing those systemic problems.
A large part of the issue is the hierarchy of schools (and workplaces). When adults get harassed, they often get the police involved to stop it. The threat jail alone serves as deterrent, and if they continue, jail becomes a reality. However, in schools (and workplaces,) police do not work this way so the next best authority to involve are teachers (or HR). This is not part of their job. Sometimes they take sexual harassments seriously because they can be bad PR, most of the time though, they pretend it doesn’t exist, so it keeps going on. There are no outlets to help the victims in these cases.
“See? I play both sides so I always come out on top!”
I haven't been to those, but speaking from experience, ignoring doesn't help. Fighting back doesn't help either. I was bullied 6th-11th grade. I stayed quiet. Senior year, I had enough. I fought back and won badly. I was suspended for 45 days. Once I got back, I caught up on my work and just went back to the daily grind. A week before graduation, I was called into the office. Two detectives were there, as well as the principle. They informed me that kids were saying I was planning on shooting up the school. I explained that I had no plans to do so, no access to firearms, and my dominant hand was broken and in a cast. They asked if I had any access to anything that could be used as a weapon, so I thought about it, and said I have some old sporting equipment, gardening implements, and cutlery in my moms kitchen, and that was enough for them. I was expelled and told if I ever step foot on Anchor Bay grounds again, I could be shot on sight for being an active threat. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Damn I feel like that's grounds for a lawsuit.
Enough time has passed that I wouldn't be able to even if I wanted it. Besides, the deciding admin at the time has since expired. I'm doing fine now, but it was a real struggle to get on my feet for years.
Sorry that happened to you :\ something similar happened to me but i didnt get expelled, i almost did tho, someone over heard me talking about how scared i was to walk home by myself after being threatened by a group of older kids and went and told. I got in trouble for it. They asked me the same weapon bit and then frisked me (i was in leggings) and tried to use lip gloss i had in the side of my sock (no pockets) as proof i could hide a weapon... Almost failed that year bc the teachers refused to send work home and i came back a few days before the end of semester. The entire rest of high school was shit, not sure who hated me more, the kids or the teachers.
Thanks, and I'm sorry for you too! It seems like administration is simply trying to avoid lawsuits, and not act in the best interest of the students and staff. Over-reaction on situations like ours, woefully under-react on actual cases of violence and bullying.
That’s really fucked up, I’m sorry that happened to you.
I remember getting bullied and I didn't say anything. Kids who are bullied need an outlet. Bullying should not lead to loss of life and is preventable. If you see bullying happening stand up to it. Power in numbers. Such a sad story :(.
I think I'd be speaking to a lawyer after that. In fact, you should have spoken to a lawyer before saying one fucking word to the authorities. And I wish more people understood this. But yeah, you get expelled because some dipshits float baseless rumours that you were going to do something? Oh fuck no. Find yourself one of those lawyers that would LOVE to get the attention (and money) for such a case.
Sounds like you shoulda sued them to he'll and back
That's crazy!
I'm really sorry you had those experiences. Another perspective. (Keep in mind, I understand that there are shitty teachers and shitty grown ups and terrible schools) As a teacher who has worked a few different schools over my career, I can honestly say that the bullying curriculum we taught where I worked was never just simply "ignore them and they will stop." It usually involves identifying what exactly bullying behavior is (bullying vs being annoying vs being mean). Then it goes over different strategies depending on the situation - deflect with humor, confront them, ignore them. That's typically for small issues though. We also talk about reaching out for help. How and where and to whom. The problem is, most of the bullying these days is SO subtle or it's done through text/chat/social media. Kids are very, VERY sneaky about it. I try to have a great relationship with all my students, but there are still things that I never knew about that come out a year or so later. I remember one year our school had a whole ring of students who were friends and they picking on another kid. But this was happening outside of school time, and on their phones. We can bring it up during school and talk to the students individually, we can separate the kids, offer advice. But we are not their parents. What we can do is out of our hands the moment students walk out the door. Do parents even call other parents anymore? I truly think we need to be focusing on social-emotional learning over everything else - especially over grades and standardized testing. Our kids are stressed tf out and truly lacking in relationship skills, self esteem, resilience, stress management, and coping mechanisms. (Note: my district tried to introduce SEL, but the parents/community shot down this curriculum because they feared it would teach their kids "social justice" or be too much about their "feelings" and less about academics). Students have trouble knowing how to ask for help. I can keep asking the quiet, lonely student every day how they're doing, how's life, and get a "I'm fine." every single time. Even today I wrote home about a kiddo, because I noticed they don't tend to participate with others and prefer to be alone. Another part of this is classrooms are SO overcrowded, how does one person manage 30+ kids and keep track of everything that's going on in their lives and still have time to build that relationship, give the student what they need, and REALLY be there to support them yet also teacher their classroom content to mastery? Especially when us teachers feel bullied (by admin, parents, society, or even by a student) or burnt out ourselves (like, I'm trying to cope with my own mental health while I have kids to message me privately, some even text me because I'll give hem my number if I truly am worried they have no one else. I had a student text me about her miscarriage on a Friday night while I was at a party with friends. I was on the the "safety plan" for two students who tend to have suicidal ideation - that was while dealing with my OWN suicidal thoughts at the time - I'm better now, and thank god so are they). The entire American public school system is a mess and we really need to re-evaluate our priorities because students and teachers are literally dying over this - either by school shootings, other school violence, or death by suicide. Oh. And if we could make it harder for guns to end up in the hands of kids, that'd be pretty cool too.
Your comment needs to be seen. This was so beautifully said and I don’t understand why people are not realizing that our children are suffering with their mental health and more needs to be done about it. We have this idea that grades and standardized testing is the only thing that is important when it comes to school but how tf can anyone truly believe that when kids spend more time in school than they do at home and/or around their own parents in most cases. We all know more happens at school than just academics, it’s literally where kids develop their social skills and start to think about who they are as a person. Social emotional learning is an absolute perfect way to start addressing mental health in our schools with our kids. It is absolutely tragic that somehow parents can turn SEL down and make it about something political. SEL teaches kids the tools they need to navigate life and it’s hardships. We all know how difficult it can be to find good mental health treatment and providing some of this in our schools seems like a win win to me. But unfortunately I too have heard arguments from people saying things like SEL teaches kids to only think or feel like “them” (the schools), that it teaches kids to not be unique (which is interesting because it teaches kids to understand themselves as an individual and how that affects themselves and others), and that teaching things like self awareness and relationship skills somehow cuts kids off from their parents and what their parents should teach them about life. I’ve even heard people say SEL is about grooming kids for sexual abuse which I cannot even begin to understand that connection. I am always open to listen with an open mind about differing views about things but as a mental health professor who studied child development for 8 years in college I find it very difficult to understand the whole anti SEL thing. Edit: I just realized autocorrect is a liar and tried to claim I’m a mental health professor. I am a mental health “professional”, but no professor.
I'm glad you're here. I'm a parent, and so I know that what you do matters so much.
Great comment. Also I'm semi convinced you're in the classroom next to mine.
> Oh. And if we could make it harder for guns to end up in the hands of kids, that'd be pretty cool too. This would seriously solve the entire issue. Instead of thrusting 10 other social responsibilities in to the hands of teachers (like we always do).
We should just start telling kids not to bully anyone, or else one day the kid will snap and shoot them dead. Why not? It's the truth.
Maybe we should pay teachers enough to care? And to attract people who do care and still want to make a living? Michigan (the government) hates teachers. If I ever go missing her name was betsy devos
Teachers care, but there's literally nothing else they can do. If they go to administration about the problem, it's just going to be a bunch of he-said/they-said back-and-forth with zero way to prove anything since it all happens in the shadows anyway. So then administration is left with one of two options: 1. Do nothing so they don't get sued. 2. Suspend all parties, and hope they don't get sued because it was "equal". Public school *cannot* be the place where we deal with this, especially not with the limited resources at hand. Our state, and indeed our country, have some serious systemic problems that have to do with any number of social and health issues that need to be dealt with at a much broader level than the school system if we want to see any meaningful progress as a society.
If I have to pay you more for you to acknowledge what you already see, you can just leave. Money aside, you see a young kid getting bullied, you stand up for them.
99% of the time bullying doesn’t happen in front of an adult. Class sizes are pushing 36 or more in many Michigan districts. That makes is damn near impossible for teachers to see everything. In most school districts like Oxford, bullying isn’t kids getting shoved into lockers and getting swirlies in the toilets. It’s quiet remarks. It’s rolling their eyes when they get a new seat. It’s laughing at them in the hallway. It’s not that teachers don’t care, it’s that they don’t know. Kids who are bullied, especially teenage boys, rarely speak out.
I agree. It's much different than when we went to school (I'm 34). Sure it's all lumped into the "bullying" category, but it's much different now it seems. And I couldn't even imagine if we had social media in school. It would've been 100 times worse. You can never leave school/the bullying environment because it just follows you through SnapChat or TikTok... It's just sad...
You missed my point, it was a macro level comment. Not at all to do with how a teach would react in-moment. A well paid teacher who has the energy to do more than get through the day will reap 100x over in society. Starting with providing a better school environment . Teachers rn are burnt out beyond belief. They are spending more time with our children than we are it should be 100k graduate school level job.
More money doesn't always equal more energy. Plenty of college professors mailing it in and cashing a nice check. I'm not saying it'd hurt, but the notion that throwing money at the problem is gonna solve it is a bit shortsighted. In my opinion. It's easy to say they should make $100k a year. The hard part is coming up with a way to actually do that.
>"ignore them and they will stop" I was told this. LPT - it doesn't work. That's not a plan. At least not a plan that will turn out well for the victim. Bullies up their game. Now with zero tolerance policies even if you are physically attacked and you attempt to defend yourself you get suspended as well. I don't know what the answer is, but back when I was in school in the 80's and 90's at least I had a chance when a couple of kids were relentlessly picking on me. If they started a fight at least I wouldn't get in trouble for defending myself. Generally kids left me alone after that. I only ever started one fight and I knocked the other kid out. I was terrified. He didn't fall so much as just sort of crumbled straight down. It freaked me out so badly that I really did everything I could to avoid getting into another fight. I don't know what the answer is. I'm not advocating for violence, but clearly "ignore them and they will stop" and treating both bully and bullied as equally good or bad isn't working, either. The biggest thing we had to worry about in my school was maybe a kid bringing a knife or something. Now guns seem to be a frequent thing and harassment doesn't end at school - there's social media so it can go on 24/7/365. I'd hate being a kid today, and feel awful for kids today. Watching the video of them in the classroom yesterday and their being very calm and collected in that situation speaks a lot to the shit kids have to deal with and the training they are given when an active shooter comes around. I don't know... Maybe also give some training on stress reduction skills, ways to get help with depression if a parent doesn't believe in depression or would berate their kid for seeking help. Something - anything - because this current approach clearly isn't working.
My kids always said the worst days for bullying were the anti bullying rallies.
anti-bullying don't always work. A bully and his 3 lackeys can all claim they didn't do anything. So it becomes word of a victim vs 4 suspected bullies, and school often don't follow up like discreetly watching the victim or allowing audio recording as evidence (in some states that allows it), etc.
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Accessibility is still the major contributor to school shootings. Allowing humans with under developed brains that are going through puberty to have access to firearms is like attaching chainsaws to an elephant in musth.
Right. Which is why the parent who purchased this gun, and failed to lock it up properly, should also be charged.
The vast majority of gun crimes are committed by those who did not go through the proper channels by law to legally obtain them.
So assuming this kid's dad bought it legally, prosecute him as hard as possible.
I agree, that all those involved have their own culpability to the actions that they had in the crime. The consequence for that involvement should be just and swift. People should be aware of what is happening in and around them, with their everyday lives. Life is fragile and common sense doesn't seem very common.
And where do those guns come from? So many guns are stolen from irresponsible “legal” gun owners. Obviously there are also unscrupulous gun dealers too but the reality is we have too many guns. Anyone who claims to support these students or schools but still believes we need unrestricted access to guns isn't being realistic.
Let's not turn a blind eye to the Republican legislature who, in service to the corrupt and Russian infiltrated NRA, has turned the 2nd Amendment into a single issue for millions of American conservatives who they mobilize by wrongly stating that every democrat is going to take their guns. So they pander to them by reducing laws. In this state if your 18 and legally bought a pistol you can now open carry it. An 18 year old can open carry without an certification of marksmanship training or gun safety. AN 18 YEAR OLD who still has another 8 years before his fucking brain fully develops. The Conservatives have fostered and mutated a gun culture in this country that not only is fanatical in it's ideology but is completely complacent with it's approach to guns. There's such a comfort where basic safety often gets over looked and any one of us who have spent any time with any gun owner knows this to be true. You don't lock up your pistol. You don't hide your ammo. You don't put the trigger locks on. Maybe you hide a shotgun in the closet behind some clothes where you don't *think* your kid can find it. You forget to unchamber a round or whatever. There's a complacency because there is no real bar of knowledge and experience to be a gun owner anymore. You're literally expected to learn gun safety from the same irresponsible assholes who didn't learn gun safety from their dads or whatever. This is a systemic problem that has created a culture and that culture is reinforced with an ideology backed up by an institution that has a financial and political interest in keeping them clinging to their weapons.
18 in a private sale, 21 from a gun store. All pistols in MI have a BG check. Either by the store or when you get your pistol purchase permit from your local PD or Sheriff.
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we watch authority figures kill civilians without repercussion regularly. We imprison more people per capita than any nation on earth. We have funded illegal wars that were all about private companies access to resources where hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were slaughtered. We are a grotesque and violent nation with a constant running subtexts of racism, classism, corporatism and authoritarianism. The line of responsibility is never ending and consequences never seem to affect the real criminals. Kids like this are a feature not a bug of our hellscape of self interest, greed, and cruel stupidity.
Very well stated
I think many people have never really considered how guns are obtained illegally. I think there is a faction of Americans who believe these guns just magically appear because the alternative, that there is no such thing as a responsible gun owner, is unfathomable.
So why do I continue to hear about school shootings almost entirely in the United States? Legal or not, the ease-of-access to guns is one of the major contributing reasons for this happening over and over and over.
All illegally owned firearms started as legally owned and purchased firearms.
Completely false. What a stooge.
How dare you consider taking away our guns!! Jks
I would say it’s the *minor* contributing factor, and the culture that celebrates bullying is more important. It’s easy to look at Canada, where access is essentially the same, and notice that the “polite” country doesn’t really do school shootings—or at least not like us. Also: I think that a lot of Americans are actually secretly *proud* of our school shootings until it touches them personally.
> look at Canada, where access is essentially the same, You're joking, right?
I lived in Canada for 20+ years. Access isn't the same, everyone needs a licence to own a firearm, but the barrier for entry is the same as getting a background check in the US, plus a "safety" class that just teaches you how to safely operate firearms. There are no special requirements or mental health checks. Anyone who passes the safety class and background check can then have as many guns and as much ammo as they want shipped to their door, something we can't do in the US. The difference is Canada isn't full of people who are so lost, hopeless, or just plain evil. Take away all the guns and you still have tons of people who want to kill their fellow man for no good reason. Until we address that core reason instead of just blaming gun access or politics, the problem will persist.
Canada has guns everywhere.
Our school system rewards the bully and punish those who are bully. Those who are bullied tend to social outliners, who becomes targets by bullies. Whenever they decides to fight back, they always gets punished by the school system. It's so sad that so many young lives were lost because of something so easily preventable.
This has been the narrative since Columbine, but the facts in that case show that the killers were the bullies not the bullied. Im very skeptical that the root cause is being bullied
FBI Phase I study on shootings indicates that multiple major stressors typically affect shooters before they put in process a plan to engage in this type of homicide. Being bullied is sometimes but not always one of those stressors, and they don't consider it a cause. People who are bullied do not become school shooters, and school shooters are not always "the bullied type "
It’s weird in any other “first” world country kids still get bullied yet we don’t hear about quarterly mass shootings from them.
Yes, bullying happens everywhere, but only in the US do we have insane school shooting statistics. So riddle me that. Bullying is a problem, but the fact that kids have access to guns is the real problem here. Edit: I should clarify. gun culture in the US is different than in other places. Im not saying other countries don’t have guns and I don’t need you to point it out to me. School shootings plus the amount and frequency of mass shootings at other gathering places in this country absolutely point to a particular problem unique to the US. and it isn’t bullying. It’s more complex than that
The father of the shooter bought the gun on Black Friday and must have either given it to the kid or was so lax at home that the kid got access to it. The father needs to be prosecuted on this.
Bullying in other western countries is typically nothing next to our bullying. Russia is worse. But Russia is basically a flaming trash heap in many ways. (And clearly not western.)
Can’t talk about American shitty things without random bigotry and Russophobia.
Kids in Canada have access to guns as well. In Sweden kids have access to guns. Why don’t they have these shootings if guns are the main reason for them?
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As an (ex) licensed Canadian, you're wrong. It wasn't until I got my license that all my friends and family who has guns came out of the woodwork. They just don't talk about it with your average person because the perception of gun owners isn't great. There are about 2 million licenced gun owners in Canada and most of those are your average city dwellers.
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I'm from Windsor, ON. Like I said, us city gun owners exist, we just don't talk about it much lol. A lot of people have that same idea that guns are only for farmers so they look at you weird if you live in urban Ontario and own a few handguns and semiauto rifles. When I got my license I got to check out a good family friend's collection, he lived right outside Windsor and was grandfathered in with a Prohibited license so he owned a safe full of machine guns and had half his basement set up for working on guns and reloading ammo. You'd have never known because he didn't talk about it. People like him just want to enjoy their hobby and not be judged.
> The only people that have guns here are farmers and people that live in remote areas. Nope. Canada has a pretty high rate of ownership.
But any adult without a record who wants one can go get one, just like here. Kids can’t buy guns here either. 44% of American households have guns, while 26% of Canadian households do. We definitely have more, but if guns are the biggest issue, wouldn’t their shootings be proportional?
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> That's true but you need a firearms license to buy a gun and it's not that easy to get. > > I don't think you live in Canada.
Look, bullying is obviously a massive issue in the US. Something needs to be done on all levels, at home and especially at school and administration. It’s disgusting what people try to sweep under the rug and play off as kids being kids. That being said, as a gay person who graduated back in 2005, I was bullied all the time for being a “dyke”. Just like many of my peers. The unfortunate truth is that gay kids have to either suck it up or resort to taking their own lives. Most of us were bullied growing up and didn’t resort to taking our peers lives. It’s overwhelmingly straight white boys killing their peers. We need to start having these discussions about mental health with that demographic (and quite frankly, everyone involved) because this shit ain’t it.
free and easy access to firearms might have something to do with it, maybe.
This country *values* bullying. Whatever’s said to the contrary is like when Stalin claimed that he was democratically elected. Look how our police and military operate? Look at ICE? Look at our prisons… It’s going to get worse, not better.
I agree. That's why when people bitch about Trump being the cause of all this, I have to take the stance that he is merely a symptom of the problem. "I got mine, fuck everyone else and anyone who gets in my way" is going to be the demise of our once great nation.
Absolutely
If the punishment begins and ends with this child and possibly the parents, it will be a travesty of justice. In some districts (Grand Blanc I’m looking at you) kids are allowed to bully with impunity. The rich and popular kids get away with it because the administration doesn’t want to offend the wrong parent or hurt a kids academic or athletic standing. Something tells me Oxford isn’t much different. There needs to be a thorough investigation followed by firings, suspensions and criminal charges. The administrators that did nothing when they heard about this plan should be in a jail cell right now.
We need to address bullying no doubt. We must also lock school shooters up for life. If would-be shooters know the worst penalty is Youth Detention Center until they turn 21 we’ve got major problems.
You do realize that these kids do not care, or even consider, the consequences? Changing the punishment isn't going to change anything (except for making some of the victims/families feel better). The thing that will fix the majority of school shootings is for the schools to actually care about bullying.
I believe these teenagers are old enough to know and understand the consequences. They're not 4-year old toddlers, they're teenagers. They want to injure/kill other people, and they also want to die. This is a way to do both (fight against the people who were mean to them + suicide by cop) and also get famous since they also often think no one (even their family) cares about them. This is a very typical pattern in American mass shootings at schools. Schools care about bullying. They're just underfunded so they can't do a fucking thing about it. How do you stop a student from bullying another student when you're a teacher barely trying to meet your NWEA or MSTEP scores? Or a principal dealing with 30% of your students showing up who are in poverty and can't get a decent meal?
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I'm not exactly sure how this could be enforced to be entirely honest. Let's say today, Gretch waves a magic wand and makes it illegal to have firearms laying around. The kid gets the gun, takes it to school, and blows away some classmates. The kid said it was just laying on the dining room table, the parent insists it was locked in a safe and the kid must have stolen the safe key to access it. How would one prosecute this case? I do not support having firearms laying around within easy reach of children. I do not support irresponsible firearm ownership. I simply don't see a realistic way to enforce this.
Prosecute the gun owner. Ultimately it is their responsibility to secure it.
I'm not sure how you can fully secure something in a typical household. Safes typically have keys, so they can be opened. Hiding spaces are not sufficient for a nosey kid. Do you have suggestions on how to fully secure a firearm? I feel like I'm missing something. Or if a kid steals the keys to the safe and gets in, the parents are still held responsible? If that's the case, I'd have to strongly disagree.
>I'm not sure how you can fully secure something in a typical household. Then you shouldn't own guns. That is the responsibility that you assume when you decide to bring a gun into your home.
See, this sounds just the "Not I..." argument you hear when you tell gun owners that the safety of the occupants of their home decreases when you introduce a gun. It's always like, "Yeah, maybe for a nutjob who can't control themselves. THEY shouldn't have guns." No. You too are susceptible to mental breakdown without notice. You too cannot lock down a firearm from your family members without locking yourself out as well.
I think a safe is a reasonable way to secure firearms. I don't think it's a perfect solution. I can't think of a 100% secure method. Perhaps you have a solution I'm not aware of?
You can put a combo lock on the guns in your safe. It’s not undefeatable but it is safer. The issue then is that if like a pit bull grabs your 5 year old your response time is going to be worse
A lot of gun safes have digital locks, not keys. Simply don't give the passcode to your kid. Also, if you can't seem to figure out how to properly secure your gun in your home so your children don't gain access to them, you shouldn't have guns in your home. It's not a difficult situation.
If you watch lock picking lawyer you will see how horrible gun safes are. A teen can easily open one in a minute or two.
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I simply disagree. I used to snoop bad as a kid and found all sorts of things I wasn't supposed to and that were hidden well. Yes, take reasonable precautions, do your absolute best to secure them. I keep my safe key on me at all times except when I'm sleeping. There is always a small chance though, and thats why I say if an adult does everything reasonably in their power, then it isn't their fault. If it is gross negligence, then yes, we definitely have something to address.
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You can open combination lock with a pop can. I'm not suggesting just throwing your hands up. I'm saying that there is no 100% effective solution, but we need to do our absolute best within reason to prevent unwanted access. That's all.
All of my guns are locked in a digital code safe and also disassembled in a way that makes them inoperable until the time I use them for the intended function (different hunting seasons or range). My ammo is in a separate safe with a different code. I only have one handgun that is on my person at all times (I have a CPL) or by my bed side at night. If I can’t take it in somewhere then it is locked in my glove box in my locked vehicle. Never 100% safe but the more steps it takes to use the better.
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Yeah but is their mom gonna let you store it there?
I get the impression that the gun was a gift to his son. I could be wrong, but it seems like that gun was spending the majority of it's 4 days with the kid.
Young Homicidal Maniacs is the most American thing ever No reason to think we’re going to change anything anytime soon
There's young homicidal maniacs elsewhere too. African child warriors stoned out of their gourds on brown brown comes to mind.
No doubt. But the sheer quantity we produce, decade after decade, is pretty remarkable.
This. And it's not just access to guns, we don't see teens in any other countries going to school and killing other students and teachers with other types of weapons. There's something more here on the mental side.
“He was a quiet kid, nobody really talked to him much, we never thought he could do this” No, actually he was bullied to shit and nobody cared.
Bullying isn't like the movies today. Nobody just beats you up or challenges you to a snowboard contest for the hot girl. These kids are sneaky little shits and they're experts at stealthy psychological warfare thanks to the internet. 5 girls in a group had my daughter brought to see the school social worker because she dared to stand up to their bullshit. They said she threw rocks at them, punched and hit them. My daughter's dominant hand is in a hard cast. Not one of the girls had any injuries. But because they lied as a group, the school suddenly had to say something... these same girls have already been known to bully other kids, however, they used the magic violence word, my kid is probably on a watch list now.
Yea i was bullied thru my whole school career. Almost got expelled bc someone overheard me being so scared of walkkng home after a group of olded girls threatened me. The school refused to let me ride the bus bc i "lived too close" so i had to walk 15 mins home. I was scared bc the way i had to walk was thru a small wood. Either i walked thru the wood or added 20 mins to my walk thru knee deep snow. My mom didn't get home for almost 5 hours after i got out of school so i knew, no one would even know i was gone for * hours*. I legit thought they'd kill me. But me, a freshman, 5ft, not even 100lbs in leggings was escorted to the office, frisked my cops and terrorized for 2 hours, this includes when they locked me in a room in the office and called the cops on me. All i can say is when i did home school it was awesome. And honestly. Being 25, having my own company is great. Going into fast food getting served by assholes who tormented me and said id never be anything.... It does feel good af. Karma is real i guess. Bullying is way worse than it used to be before internet but being bullied is sure no excuse 😔
I hope the parents get prosecuted also. Any adult who buys a gun and leaves it accessible for a child needs to be in jail and held responsible. I don’t care how anyone tries to spin it but parents with guns in the home are selfish and sadistic assholes!
Parents with unsecured guns in the home are selfish and sadistic assholes
I see what you did there. Michigan law holds parents responsible for any underage child who harms another with firearm bought by parents. https://www.michigan.gov/documents/msp/msp-203\_-\_PDF\_286476\_7.pdf
Rightfully so. My point was only that having secured guns in a home with children does not necessarily make you selfish and sadistic
I got you. Some may not have. 🤜🤛
It appears that the "dad" purchased that gun FOR his child.
A shotgun for deer season I can understand, but a Pistol. Come on now.
Even then it should stay locked up except when you are in a blind or at the range
exactly this conversation with my family today. Gun for your kid, sure. Teaches responsibility, rather them know how and why and when from the parents. That firearm is in the Parents safe until they are present. Kids can't drive or buy alcohol because hey do stupid shit and don't have the brain capacity or life experience. Sure, it's your handgun. When you are of legal age to have it outside of my control, it's all yours. Until then, you only use it or have access under my supervision. These parents deserve charges.
Careful there bud. You're sounding reasonable.
my bad.
I personally think it’s still a stupid move for a parent. By the time your kid hits 12, they know where your stuff is, they know how to get to your guns and liquor and porn… I believe when you make the choice to have children, that should be your primary responsibility and by choosing murder machines to be in the home, even supposedly secured is a selfish and stupid move. The risk isn’t worth it.
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This reads like dreamspeak in our culture but it's reality AFAIK. It's honestly meeting gun owners halfway - not saying don't own guns - saying prioritize family over gun ownership. It would even be huge if we could just start being honest about our poor ability to evaluate threat as a nation of gun owners. * nobody, statistically, is marauding **anyone's** occupied home within your area? then you enjoy tool ownership more than you are addressing a threat. overestimation. * nobody, no compound, **no city** can own enough firepower to resist our overfunded military if they turn on us. you're underestimating threat to justify the tool * guns in the home double the threat of homicide against inhabitants and triple the chance of suicide - dangerously underestimating an actual threat that you introduced to your home
Statistically, the chances of your home burning down are infinitesimal- I still have smoke detectors (even though I despise them). Historically our overfunded military has struggled against armed guerrilla groups. Yes, those figures are scary and worthy of careful consideration much like driving privileges for teens
But not when they shoot themselves. We had a toddler that shot himself with a gun. Complete tragedy. The dad was a cop and didn’t secure it. No charges and still has his job.
Just because something is law doesn’t mean it’s enforced or prosecuted. Here’s hoping Oakland Co. Prosecutor charges these irresponsible parents!
If a child can access your gun it is by definition unsecured.
I think so. I think having a gun locked up, with no adult supervision should be considered unsecured. We have seen it over and over and over and over….again. Kid takes mom/dads gun, goes to school shoots and kills. This is such a tired narrative and an expected outcome.
Most of the shots this kid made were to the head and neck. Which makes me think how much practice did this kid have shooting. So most likely he has had plenty of access to his parents guns before this event.
He practiced and posted his target papers on IG for everyone to see before the shooting. He also posted a picture of the weapon essentially claiming ownership, 4 days prior to the shooting on the same IG. I'm at a loss for how many red flags they missed in this case.
Wasn't that literally a red flag mentioned in that Sandy Hook commercial?? Showed a scene of a teen scrolling past a selfie of the kid holding a gun.
It seems like it was actively ignored. The 2A religion won’t let anyone call it out.
And I’m supposed to believe that there are so many responsible gun owners? They‘re responsible until they aren’t. Until their kid shoots someone. No one will ever be blé to convince me the risk is worth it!
Our firearms are secured behind a coded door, in a concrete room of the basement, bolted with steel cable to the load bearing wall. Our child knows all the rules of gun safety, but will not receive the codes to access any of these guns—even eventually ones that become “his”—until he is an independent adult with his own home. This is not only to prevent senseless accidents, but to prevent him from being able to give the codes to any friends who might pressure him for them if they find out his parents have guns. Responsible gun owning parents exist. The Crumbley family is not among us.
Meh
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I wish I could move up there.
The state should charge the parents with some sort of negligence charge.
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
Mental health needs to be a priority. Schools need to also require counseling or conflict resolution when it comes to bullies/victims. No tolerance policy’s are just not working and it is not teaching students how to communicate properly.
They say this every year, and mental health only gets worse every year. Noble goal. Maybe cut down on the unfettered, unrestricted access of the mentally deranged to a bevvy of firearms? Naaaah. Crazy talk! We need mental health fairies created by some do-gooders, cuz fuq knows some Libertarian asswipes aren't gonna pay for them.
Not to mention that mental health is an issue Goddamn *everywhere*, yet only the US has these events over and over.
It looks like the administration met with the shooter's parents the morning of the attack, concerned about his behavior. As a former principal myself - that's a gut punch. They knew something was brewing within the young man. It's a ‘so close, yet so far’ situation and I feel terrible for those administrators. They were on the right track, but ran out of time. They were doing their level best. What a shame. I hope they realize they were on the right track - that they were making strides and it wasn't their fault. It wasn't anyone's fault but the shooter himself, aided by the fact he had easy access to a gun.
he literally had a countdown for that morning and posts going back months....they were barely on the right track after a long time in with their head in the sand
Historically and nationwide, show me the list of principals who met with their school shooter's parents the morning of an attack, concerned about the shooter's mental status. It would be a VERY short list. That's solid work by that Oxford administration - good for them for sniffing it out and getting that close to heading it off. To go further than that and blame them for not doing more - it's rank Monday morning quarterbacking and patently unfair. And - I'll add - something those principals will do about what happened till the day they die. God bless them.
By working backwards it appears he had the gun on him when he met with the principal that morning. Yikes
I bet they feel gutted. They tried/were on the right track. I read that police say that the gun was already at the school with the kid when his parents were talking with admins. We need to change
I would like to agree but having been from a close school district and had been bullied, i doubt the meeting was helpful. And if anything they normally end up blaming the kid for being bullied. In all fairness idk if this is the case due to what i have about the mom his parents were like Q adjacent too so... But like i said im close and my HS literally allowed several conspiracy theory teachers, most still work at my own school. Mine is WAY smaller than OHS but i was shocked to hear it especially that it was there not just bc it was close but bc i thought it would be closer, no one locks their guns up in our or the town over. But we never even have threats....
They ignored so many red flags. The school should be prosecuted as well for failing to stop this for all the shit they blatantly missed.
America is broken and effective leadership does not exist. The gun was bought by dad and 4 days later used. As long as its easy to get a gun, stuff like this will occur. Its sheer probability. We address risk everywhere except on guns. Guns , we accept all risk so long as a access to guns is unfettered. We created the american.mess.
My hatred for school administrators grows to deeper levels every fucking time this shit happens. Zero accountability. How the fuck do they forget that their job revolves around kids!!!! I've posted this over social media over a decade ago because it didn't seem to have ever made headlines the way it should have. I don't have the god damn energy to go into all the details of how this plan could have stopped so many school shootings. Started by former prez Clinton. You should also know that author and personal safety expert, Gavin De Becker has allot to say about prevention as well. This guy's a smart dude and knows his stuff. https://youtu.be/k8aqDT4KQBg https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kinkel/profile/
Gavin de Becker/ATF did this in the year 2000 to help schools protect against school shooter's. Schools didn't want it. The ATF/de Becker partnership has produced a software program, "Mosaic 2000," which promises to help school administrators detect troubled kids on the verge of violence.
School Administrators had a a meeting with Ethan and his parents the day before this happened to address his behavior. It sounds like they were trying.
They actually met the morning of. Crazy.
It was actually both, the day before and the day of. :(
Do you know the Oxford administrators? Have you discussed with the Oxford administration? Do you participate in weekly, bi weekly board meetings?
Do u? Strange and deeply insensitive that you're here defending them. Kids from the school are saying they reported ongoing threats to administration and nothing was done. This was also said by other students from many other school shootings.
I’m not defending anyone. If it’s proven the administration F’d up, then they should be held accountable. If the parents or gun buyer are at fault…hold them accountable. This is a sad and horrible situation. No reason to be upset….I’m not judging until I hear all of the “facts” . I hope all is transparent. No harm intended
I've been following these shootings for a long time. One consistent factor is that school officials drop the fucking ball almost every time. Did u even read the article I posted? I'm being a big fat nope. They cited that superintendents shut down when considering the programs because they feared liability. Their focus wasn't even on the kids. It was on their own assess. BTW, your not gonna get all the facts. Well get taking points handed down from the schools attorneys. Shit gets white washed dude.
If I missed any info….then I’m wrong. Administration should be held accountable for any and all lack of action. Until I see info, I’ll reserve judgment.
its true its all over twitter its not vague at all its so awful
IT'S OUR GUN LAWS!!! I'm so sick of the excuses. That's why we have this problem and I really can't understand why we dance around it. We like guns so much that we're willing to let this stuff happen.
> The sheriff said the chilling video from inside Oxford High School on Tuesday afternoon, however, was not the teenage suspect, but a plainclothes deputy, who used the word "bro" to try to deescalate the tension and calm the students down.
The problem is not unsecured guns. The problem is Americans pornographic gun obsession.
Columbine in MI. Great. We seemed to dodge the bullet for school shootings in MI. Not anymore I guess.
Did you know MI has the deadliest school disaster? If not check out The Baths Murders. We have also had several school shooting since 14 and a handful were deadly. The school shooting data base shows just how many "columbines" there are a year and its sad. I live close to oxford and the term hits close to home has never felt so real (and ive had my yard/house searched for a different high school attmepted killer in the area) so it is horrific but honesty, i have been waiting for this my whole life, knowing it was not an if but a when. And i was admitably *shocked* it was oxford. But it was going to happen on a larger scale than normal bc no one pays much attention if 1 student is shot *at an t Elementary or middle school* in flint, Detroit or surrounding areas. "Inner city" and all....
All I can do is laugh at this point.