About American School Shootings

I don't know about you guys but I am really broken down by this.

When you hear of a mass shooting it is frighteningly easy to become desensitized towards it. Instantly, the topic veers into bitter arguments over left v right. Gun control is so polarizing, nobody is going to budge. I kind of want to take the topic of "gun control legislation" off the table for this thread. There is more to it than guns. That is what I want to talk about with you guys.

Thanks to constant media glamorization, the very concept of shooting up a school is ingrained into every student's mind. It is the butt of every joke ever made by a ninth grader in the last three years. That is a problem. And we do these lock down drills to further ingrain the idea into every student's head "this could happen at your high school". We make it so tangible, realistic, and personal -- we should not be surprised that it actually happens.

And of course now that every student is talking about it, yeah some kid is going to emulate the fallen martyr on TV. He gets bullied too. According to the news and edgy teens on the Internet, that is what happens when people get bullied. The victim shoots up a freaking school.

We're just lucky he's got this far in life without shooting up a school

-Ricegum, in that video every high schooler ever has seen

I don't even know what I'm saying. I just think that media, schools, everyone, they're just presenting this act to kids as an option. I don't think it is purposeful, but it is happening.

Maybe to the younger crowd reading this I sound like some 80 year old conservative governor type "hurrrr the violent video games are making em crazy." Idk.

When an entire generation is watching the chaos of shootings elicit a response from every virtue signalling celebrity on Twitter then yeah, it is going to get some other kids to do it. If we completely change the way media is responding to these tragedies then we can help solve the problem. At least, that is my opinion.

Also, go Google: Parkland High Shooting - Human Emotion As Students Evacuated (It is a bit hard to stomach but I think it is relevant)

Just share any thoughts you may have on the subject. It doesn't have to be insightful or anything, just ramble about your feelings like I did. I'd love to read what you guys think.

That video has to make you feel something about this whole mess.

ugh

what

it isn't a gun problem we have. It's a people problem it's always the poor bullied kids that snap and never the popular kids. We need teachers that actually care and try to help these people get the help they need not ones that ignore it then will go and say that if the kids came to them they will help. I saw it when I was in school and only one teacher I know actually did something when a kid came to them about it. The rest either ignore it or say they can't do anything about bullying unless they see it. Even if they don't punish the bully they can still make some changes to allow the bullied kid to escape from the bullies. So gun control won't help much cause a kid can still do stuff with a knife or any other weapon. Untill we have reforms in people we won't fix anything.

So true. I'm not here to argue whether or not gun control legislation will or won't reduce shootings, but I do think that politicians are using this crisis to their advantage to further their side of the debate. It is gross, all about reelection for them.

We need to look harder at the root of the problem. Why is there such an obsession with school shootings in youth culture right now? How do we reduce that? Why do students feel so tormented that they resort to that? How do we ease their anger? Start there.

The one to blame is the student. Don't pin his actions on the teachers or anyone else.

I don't think he's trying to pin it on anyone. He's just stating the facts.

Kids being bullied is not a justification for murder. Nor is it the teacher's fault. Being bullied does not justify anyone to kill people.

It's doesn't justify it but it does cause it.

No it doesn't, bullying does not lead to murder. That is an insane suggestion. The person who caused it was the gunman, no one else. There may be factors which made him face bullying, but millions of people are bullied annually and they don't go shoot up a school.

This what happens when there is no natural selection and defectives are passing on genes.

Obviously sometimes it does.

I'm not defending the gunmen. Through facing adversity they could've become better than the rest but they failed at life & chose the low road.

I can get behind that!

@seagod: believe it or not. There are bullies and poor people everywhere around the world. Hell i was bullied and poor but i never shot up a school. In fact NOBODY EVER did in Serbia.

You are defending the gunman by saying this wouldn't have happened if is wasn't for the teachers.

Teachers go through hell, kids are rotten, they don't get good pay... etc.. You are taking blame off of the shooter and applying it to others who never supported anyone going and shooting up a school. The SOLE fault is on the gunman, nobody else is remotely responsible for him having a gun and deciding to mow down people with it.

Bullying does not lead to murders, plenty of people are bullies and they don't murder. The problem was the guy who did it, he had problems (according to students).

^

It's American society conditioning people to be complete & utter pussies because everything is too easy for them while they ride on the backs of the truly hard working foundation of America.

About said "Violent Video Games":

Why do people insist on blaming Video Games for what happens IRL, yes they are bad influences on young childrens minds, and parents are always quick to blame them, but do they realize it's their own fault ?

Those video games have a single big letter in the bottom right hand corner, and It's there to tell what ages the game is suitable for. It's been there for over 20 years. buying a child an M rated game is like letting him/her go watch adult films or porn. Those games are for adults, not children. but when the mom/dad buys the kid whatever they want to keep them quiet and out their hair, that's when all the trouble starts. they're too lazy to do 5 minutes of research and see that those games are not made to be played by children. I've seen parents let their 8-9 year old children play uber-violent games like GTA 5 and not even glance at what they're doing in the game. so when the media wants to blame "Violent Video Games" why don't they blame the parents who give the kids access to them in the first place ?

They allow their children to be exposed to violence, become desensitized to it, and turn to it to blow off steam. Sooner or later, that's going to spill into real life. when a child can commit all sorts of crimes in a game and get away with it, they're going to develop ideas about doing it in RL too.

just my $0.02

@cable_extreme:

Are you even trying to see his point? Because you keep veering away from it, straight for the strawman.

He's not saying being bullied unequivocally leads to murder or that the gunman is absolved of his guilt because he was bullied. Both of those notions are obviously senseless. However, it's not senseless to point out the clear 1:1 correlation between between bullied and shooting up a school. Honestly, name one school shooter that doesn't fit into a social outcast/bullied subset of people. You can't.

I'm not American but it seems there would be less shootings if white people just beat their kids.

God bless you for saying that! It's so true!

Correlation does not equal causation.

This. nuff said.

And a random gotcha phrase does not mean you properly defended your point.

It is statistics 101. Not a random phrase at all.

I think most rational people realize that it's America's degenerated, multi cultural, broken down, clown world of a society that factors into all these people snapping and going Rambo in public places. Not to mention a contributing factor is no doubt the medicare system in our country puts tons of people, including children, on opiates and anti depressants for nebulous reasons and then is taken back when these people are cited as "not being in their right mind". Ya think??

Gun control is dumb anyways. In most states death by homicide with a firearm doesn't even factor into the top 15 causes of death for each singular state, and the states that do have higher homicide rates are ones with notoriously violent inner cities that have gang problems. We should ban sugar opiates, and automobiles....because statistically they cause more deaths.

@cable_extreme: Dude your just being stubborn. If being bullied "causes" someone to decide to shoot up a school then bullying was the cause.

For sure there are other underlying factors but being bullied was the straw that "caused" the camel's back to break.

Your just arguing semantics for the sake of argument.

This isn't statistics and it is a completely random phrase to use in this situation. You're tying to use the phrase to completely diminish my point without having to address it. Even using that phrase in this situation makes me doubt your understanding of correlation vs causation. I'm not saying bullying causes school shootings, i'm simply saying they correlate. This means, that all things considered, there is a third factor (overabundance of guns/mental disease/etc) that causes one to be bullied and/or puts guns in kids hands. That third factor then links/correlates the two other factors -- bullying and school shootings.

No, bullying cannot cause someone to buy a gun and shoot up a school. It is not a logical path that people follow or there would be way more cases of school shootings than there are now. There are what 323 million people in the USA, and less than 100 school shootings in the span of 100 years.

People who shoot schools do not arrive to that choice from a logical conclusion, there is something mentally wrong with them. Bullying is not the issue.

From someone got cutass as a child in the Bahamas, here here.

It is irrelevant if it is not a causation.

There is a reason they teach you this in statistics, there could be a correlation that almost all shooters listen to rock music. Does that mean rock music leads to shooting up schools?

Correlation does not equal causation.

I agree. Like I said there are other factors but often bullying is the last straw. People need to stop pushing the mentally ill to their limit.

Eyyy Bajan + Jamaican family here represent.

We aren't walking Psychologist that can diagnose anyone we meet as mentally ill.

But we are people who can refrain from antagonizing each other.

Then how are you able to deduce that;

"there is something mentally wrong with them."?

Explain how the correlation is suddenly irrelevant without causation? That makes no sense.

I understand correlation. I don't think you do, however.

here could be a correlation that almost all shooters listen to rock music. Does that mean rock music leads to shooting up schools?

Right here, you're showing that you're missing the point. You wouldn't use "leads" if you understood the difference between a causation and a correlation. If something leads to something it's a causation, not a correlation.

Columbine happened 20 years ago. Nothing new. I was making jokes about school shooters back in the 7th grade a whole ten years ago. I'm sure kids were doing the same a while after Columbine. Though I do agree with that point of exposure/publicity of the gunmen/shooters. It probably does encourage more of these types of people to step over the edge and shoot up a school or whatever. I know the names and faces of both Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. I know none of the victim's names. It really helps when you see news articles plaster the face of a freak like Adam Lanza, and that god awful picture they used every time.

Anyway, I've grown numb to this. Obviously it sucks that this happens.

Okay, so keeping to the theme of just sharing thoughts here:

So when I was 15 I got busted with a big ass knife in school. It fell out of my bag (what an amateur but at the same time, thank god) and when my best friend saw it she grabbed it. My friends told the teachers, teachers brought my parents into school. Nothing came of it, other than I was homeschooled for the rest of my time there.

Anyway, I'm not sure what my plan was that day. Was I gonna kill myself? Or kill someone who'd been hurting me? Or was I gonna snap and just stick someone random? Thankfully, we'll never know. Also, very glad we don't have guns in the UK to the extent they are present in some other societies. Doesn't bear thinking about.

Thing is, I was being physically abused outside of school, and bullied in school. Was a total misfit, had serious mental and emotional issues really. Was self-harming, bulimic, all over the map. Went from reasonably pleasant kid with straight A's to absolute trainwreck. And the breaking point came when I was assaulted sexually by a boy in my class, and both the school and the local police completely dropped the ball on it.

So you've got this disturbed, angry kid getting more and more frustrated with the world, who just wants to keep her head down and stay out of trouble. I remember feeling like I couldn't catch a break, couldn't even catch my breath, and everywhere I went I had to look over my shoulder. I just wanted someone to help me and it felt like everywhere I turned, people just kicked me down. The world was closing in every day and I felt so weak, and powerless, and scared.

I don't remember what I was thinking, or even if I was thinking at all, the morning I took the knife to school. I just felt like I needed to make it stop, something had to change because I couldn't take it anymore.

None of this justifies what I tried do. Even now, as an adult with better coping strategies and some insight into my own mental health, I cannot justify it. I like to think I only would have hurt myself, since I have a general tendency to do so. But idk, maybe there's something relevant in there.

It would seem, according to some persons in this thread, it would be your fault alone and that you can only blame whatever mental health issues you may have.... anything else that would've led up to it would be completely irrelevant, so you said a lot of that for no apparent reason.

On a real, though, it's good to hear things happen the way they did and no one got hurt. Always a lesson to be learned if you survive the negatives in life.

So what are you arguing? That this is correlated? There are tons of things correlated with stuff. All shooters wear clothes (that is a correlation), All shooters wield guns (another correlation). Without proving causation, your post is fruitless. Statistics 101.

@batman242:Heh. I've always seen it as being both. If I'd been just suffering with mental illness, or was just in difficult circumstances, then things might not have gone down the way they did. Maybe if my personality was different, or upbringing was different, or a thousand things.... But situations like this are complex, with many causes and factors that seem to come together.

And agreed. Nobody got hurt, and I got the help I needed.

Its a combination of human nature, Parent inadequacy, teachers dealing with bullying in a poor manner and America's lack of gun control that leads to this sort of stuff.

Thanks God I live i the UK, worse think that happened in my school was a guy bringing a pocket knife in.

I feel it would help if the media didn't make every school shooter famous while at the same time going into great detail as to exactly how the shooter was able to succeed, effectively teaching any similarly minded individuals exactly what to do to pull off their own mass shooting and become famous.

The fear mongering and hate perpetuated from our news networks is poisoning our society.

@bumpyboo:

I know it doesn't mean much coming from a stranger, but I'm glad things worked out the way they did and that you're doing better now. I was bullied in school but not nearly to the extreme you described, and I honestly can't say for sure that I wouldn't have reacted just as extremely as you did if it had been me in your shoes.

Now you're just being fallacious because you don't want concede on a largely petty matter. All i'm arguing, as i've been saying, is that there is a correlation between being bullied and shooting up schools. This simply means there is a mutual connection between being bullied and shooting up schools. This doesn't mean one causes the other, because that is causation, only that they are connected -- a correlation. For example, a connection between the two may be mental illness, therefore they correlate. Or, how homelessness and crime correlate with each other through other factors such as drugs, population etc etc.

Yes, there are near infinite correlations in life if you squint your eyes enough to cherry pick them all. That doesn't mean your point is valid, however.

No, I don't need to prove causation between them at all. You've already made it clear that you don't understand "statistics 101", so instead of grasping at "causation" and statistical phrases like proverbial straws explain why my post is fruitless? I asked you in the previous post but you ignored me.

What I think you're saying is that since "correlation does not imply causation" and since causation (bullying causes shootings) is false, the correlation itself must be false? However, if you bothered to read my post you'll see that my reasoning doesn't depend on (direct) causation at all. A correlation is a relationship, a connection between two or more things. I can look through all the school shooters and say with confidence that they were all bullied. That is a RELATIONSHIP. In other words, it's a CORRELATION. I don't know how to make it any more simple than i've already put it throughout these post so i'll use this picture:

Ice-Cream consumption and drowning are correlated, but, as you like to point out, correlation does not imply causation. That's 100% correct. Eating ice-cream does not make you drown. However, they don't need to affect each other to be correlated. If we were getting into causation, we'd look towards other factors like summer.

Means a lot whenever someone takes a minute to say that, I appreciate it. Doesn't matter that we're strangers, you took the time. So thank you :)

The fact that students are doing this at an increasing rate is a societal issue. School shooters aren't hivemind, and they don't raise themselves.

Of course nobody else should take the blame for an individual's death besides the murderer. But if we want to gut the problem we have to be asking "why are our kids becoming murderers?"

Increasing rate? Not really.

Assuming you look at population growth.

@buttersdaman000:

Now you're just being fallacious because you don't want concede on a largely petty matter. All i'm arguing, as i've been saying, is that there is a correlation between being bullied and shooting up schools. This simply means there is a mutual connection between being bullied and shooting up schools. This doesn't mean one causes the other, because that is causation, only that they are connected -- a correlation. For example, a connection between the two may be mental illness, therefore they correlate. Or, how homelessness and crime correlate with each other through other factors such as drugs, population etc etc.

There is a correlation between shooters wearing clothes, there is a correlation between a school shooter and wielding guns (lol). Correlations do not mean anything until you find which one/s are the root cause.

Yes, there are near infinite correlations in life if you squint your eyes enough to cherry pick them all. That doesn't mean your point is valid, however

I'm not the one cherry picking a correlation, you are with bullying. You are suggesting that bullying has something to do with school shootings, sure it may be a correlation but it doesn't mean anything.

No, I don't need to prove causation between them at all. You've already made it clear that you don't understand "statistics 101", so instead of grasping at "causation" and statistical phrases like proverbial straws explain why my post is fruitless? I asked you in the previous post but you ignored me.

The post is fruitless because you are pointing out a correlation between two things without proving they directly effect each other. At this moment, a bullying correlation with school shooters is no more important than saying most shooters like Rock Music. (Or any other attributed correlation).

What I think you're saying is that since "correlation does not imply causation" and since causation (bullying causes shootings) is false, the correlation itself must be false? However, if you bothered to read my post you'll see that my reasoning doesn't depend on (direct) causation at all. A correlation is a relationship, a connection between two or more things. I can look through all the school shooters and say with confidence that they were all bullied. That is a RELATIONSHIP. In other words, it's a CORRELATION. I don't know how to make it any more simple than i've already put it throughout these post so i'll use this picture:

I never said it wasn't a correlation, in fact the phrase "Correlation does not equal causation" implies a correlation.

Ice-Cream consumption and drowning are correlated, but, as you like to point out, correlation does not imply causation. That's 100% correct. Eating ice-cream does not make you drown. However, they don't need to affect each other to be correlated. If we were getting into causation, we'd look towards other factors like summer.

How does this prove your point? Or suggest that bullying is a causation with school shooters?