(no subject)

[vicarz]

Warning - I'm going to be trite.

So there was another shooting by a kid with black nails, MM shirt, and a trench coat. Once again, despite the high number of weapons and ammo, the casualty count was low. Perhaps this was a record low - the only fatality was the kid himself! Why can't murderous rampaging kids, with all this weaponry, with all the influence of video games, all of that anger, actually do some damage!? If the initial reports are correct, the first shooting victim was someone the kid bumped into on his way out of the bathroom, who in response punched the black-fingernailed kid in the face. I think shooting someone who punches you in the face is understandable - overkill, but if you had a choice of all the kids in school to shoot, and you're carrying a gun - I'd go for "the guy who just punched me in the face." On the other hand, I listened to WHUR this AM, and the djs were running down the shooting victims as black, with the shooter white. It's all about race? Ugh. They also noted that he had recently been in a fight with a kid because he said he didn't believe in god, that he worshipped MM. The djs were pointing out the race and religion issues (read between the lines and understand their tone was "no god, evil." The kid reacts to discipline and bullies, but they'll blame goth, religion, and racism.
(note - sounds like a dumb-ass, I'm not supporting him, just saying the finger-pointing is pathetic) (but I do support shooting bullies)

Sine wave - dad was on a ventilator again, now he's off again. I gave his ugly wife more grief about swapping germs - she ignored them, well no, she actually kissed him more to show her disdain for those stupid rules and my comments. The nurses don't seem to care. It would be kinda cool if my dad survived and she died from an antibiotic-resistant bacterium.

Comments

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

I heard somewhere that most soldiers in battle tend to only pretend to shoot at the enemy. They're so reluctant to actually shoot anyone that they fake it, missing on purpose. It makes sense to me but I don't know where the research came from or how they conducted it, so I can't back it up.

Anyway, maybe the kid wanted a big, dramatic exit but didn't actually want to kill anyone.

[eac.livejournal.com]

1. I agree with this comment about the shooter.
2. Your father's wife should be stopped.

[ashbet]

It sounds like the kid was bullied -- suspended for a fight outside school (wonder who instigated that one?) and then punched in the face walking out of the bathroom -- no WONDER he wanted to shoot the place up.

I would love to see ACTUAL zero-tolerance bullying policies in place -- for too damn long, school policy has been to blame the victim in "fights", which are often really one-sided.

I don't know all the details of THIS case, but it sounds awfully damned familiar.

-- A :/

[samaritan1975.livejournal.com]

Pretty much true- there's some natural human conditioning most people have to get through before they can put a round in a man. You can imagine why there are heavy psych profiles done on those who go on to be snipers.

It's not that way for everybody, of course.

Even at that range, though, it's not hard to miss. Could be that he was jerking the trigger, rather than squeezing.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Let's combine the topics!
(disclaimer - kidding!)

[ex-dasboot.livejournal.com]

Damn those schools blaming the victim! It's their fault some one came in and shot up the place!

What?

[kelowna.livejournal.com]

I will say, not to sound trite myself, that it is a miracle that MORE people don't die in these shootings. I went to a shooting range twice and it was remarked that I was a "natural" all because I had played alot of shooting video games. Overall, I don't play alot of video games - no doubt, anyone else, plays many more video games than me and therefore should be able to shoot better than me and I shot damn well!

*whew*

But I do not find it hard at all to understand WHY kids flip out in school and shoot other kids and I agree it all starts with alienation/bullying and the fear that this is all there is in life.

--kelowna

[vicar.livejournal.com]

You kicked my ass in virtually all shooting games we played. So remind me not to piss you off if you're armed.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Uh, no, not what she did. It's understandable that he did the shooting when the school has a bully-tolerant envrionment, just like it was understandable that OJ MIGHT have killed his wife and new boy-toy after he saw the bitch's new lay tooling around town in his old car. "I'm not saying he did it...I'm just saying I understand."

Here, there is an ongoing profiling issue with the goth kids - so rather than address the bullying that inspires these shootings, they'll target goth kids to keep them from shooting. Does bullying relieve nerds from liability for their crimes? No...but I understand.

[ashbet]

*nodnod*

I'm not in any way excusing the shootings -- obviously, the kid was seriously troubled.

However, it's also obvious that he WAS being bullied (the casual punch in the face, the fact that he was suspended after a fight started because another kid took issue with his disbelief in God), and I do think that schools should be more aware of the fact that in every school shooting case that I can think of, there was a documented history of the shooter being tormented and singled out by their peers, and the schools generally did nothing to stop it.

Speaking as someone who WAS relentlessly bullied and sexually harassed to the point of attempted rape on school grounds (and when I kicked the shit out of the guy who tried to rape me, *I* was almost arrested for assault), I think that I have some amount of insight into the psyche of someone who doesn't feel safe in school and someone who the administration made no effort to protect. (I was actually told "boys will be boys," and accused of somehow being excessively "provocative" and therefore attracting their unwanted sexual interest.)

I didn't shoot the place up, but I also didn't have a documented history of mental problems and attempted self-harm and harm to others, like Coon did.

There is no excuse for shooting up a school, but there is also no excuse for schools failing to protect the children in their care.

-- A

[topaz720.livejournal.com]

What do you think the school should have done differently?

[djpsyche.livejournal.com]

The obligatory flippant remark: "SuccessTech"? Could they think of a name that screamed "School for Losers" any more loudly?

[ex-dasboot.livejournal.com]

All fair, but the point I was making was that you accused the schools of blaming the victim and then did the exact same thing within the same breath.

I had more than my share of bulling too, chased down by red necks on trucks, glass bottles thrown at me, spit on, random fights, death threats. Fun times. Yet mass murder never entered my mind as a retaliation, even as a fantasy. Bulling was definitely a catalyst, I just disagree that killing people and yourself because of being excessivly picked on is in any way understandable.

[end-fate.livejournal.com]

I feel kind of bad for the kid. Seems like he really had no way out of his situation. Sucks it had to be like that.

His wife is a bully, btw. :D

[ashbet]

Well, stopped other kids from physically attacking him, first-off.

One student said:

Coon had been beaten up Monday after saying "F--- God" during an argument.

Note that COON was suspended after this fight, even though he was the one who was attacked.

Also, students had attempted to warn the principal, who was apparently too busy to meet with them:

On CBS' "Early Show" Thursday morning, student Rasheem Smith said the school's principal, Johneita Durant, had not found time to discuss students' concerns about Coon, The Associated Press reported.

"I told my friends in the class that he had a gun and stuff," Smith said. "He was talking about doing it last week. I don't know why they didn't say nothing.

"We talked to the principal. She would try to get us all in the office, but it would always be too busy for it to happen."

Another quote from the CNN story:

"You get pushed and pushed and pushed, and sometimes you go over the edge," a neighbor told CNN affiliate WOIO.

"I ain't justifying nothing," said another neighbor. "I ain't saying he did the right thing, but I am saying he got pushed for a long time and asked them people to help, help, help, help, but nobody helped."

There were any number of clear signs that this kid was at-risk, that he was being bullied, and that he had a history of violent behavior and self-harm.

I'm not saying that this shooting *absolutely could* have been prevented, but I do think that a number of warning signs were ignored, and that the school penalized Coon for "fights" that he got into when he was actually being bullied.

-- A :/

[ex-dasboot.livejournal.com]

If we're going with Chris Rock quotes, how about "What ever happened to just plain crazy?".

[ashbet]

No, I'm not blaming the victim (Coon), I'm blaming the bullies, and the administration which allowed the bullying to continue unchecked.

The boy who punched Coon in the face was an attacker. He got more than he bargained for as a response, but I don't really see him as being a victim.

-- A :/

[http://users.livejournal.com/_blackjack_/]

This was true in WWII. Only about 20% of front-line riflemen fired there weapons at all in combat. (firing ratio was higher for team-fired weapons, like machine-guns and mortars.)

By Vietnam, they had altered the training techniques (doing target-practice on human-shaped silhouettes rather than bulls-eyes) that the percentage was more like 90%. Some have argued that this is a contributing factor to the prevalence of PTSD among Vietnam vets: that they took men who would ordinarily be incapable of killing and conditioned them to kill, and then didn't, y'know, change them back. I can find the relevant literature if you want. I think the key term is "ratio-of-fire."

[vicar.livejournal.com]

I do - punching is wrong, but shooting in retaliation is actually far more wrong. I understand, and unlike Mr. Dasbot wholly non-existant god did I fantisize about killing my attackers, but killing is still wrong.

Some of those assholes who picked on me grew into decent people (others didn't). A greater wrong isn't justified by a wrong - for reference, see US foreign policy.

[ex-dasboot.livejournal.com]

How many kids were in your high school? Mine had 2 thousand in the freshman class alone. I'm really not sure how an underfunded, understaffed school is supposed to know all of this about each and every student. Maybe this one was different, but I doubt it. It just seems like all of these warning signs are this crystal clear only in hindsight. Tons of kids go through the exact same thing yet don't resort to murder.

[ashbet]

I think my graduating class was around two thousand . . . not entirely sure, though.

When a principal gets an explicit warning from more than one student that a child who is known to be at-risk is making death threats, it is their responsibility to act on it in a prompt and professional fashion. I don't buy that she was "too busy" to meet with at least one of the students who came to her with their concerns.

That qualifies as a "crystal clear warning" in my book.

-- A <3

[ex-dasboot.livejournal.com]

Gunman shoots people. You blame people gunman shot for why the gunman shot them.

That's called blaming the victim.

[ashbet]

Bully *assaults* student.

Student retaliates by shooting.

It's overkill, and I'm not justifying it, but the original bully, who punched Coon in the face, is an attacker who got more than he bargained for in response.

-- A

[vicar.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I agree with both of you - now it's just semantics :)

[trhodes.livejournal.com]

Fucked up man. I can't believe how lousy of a shot kids are these days. I'd waste them in Doom.

--
Tom Rhodes

[desiringmachine.livejournal.com]

actually this school was different, before this happened the only thing that would have gotten it into the news was their graduation rate compared to others in the area - 94% vs. 55%. this was a model school that was designed for more individual attention to students and their success. i guess they're learning something, but apparently not much about how it's not good to punch people in the face when they accidentally bump into you.