Don’t want the day to go by without bearing witness to yet another tribute to Moloch demanded by the idolators of the gun.
This is a fractal tragedy. The shooter, who killed himself, was a high school student who seems to have been bullied since elementary school whose younger sister had recently been targeted as well. That was, two fellow students said,
“The last straw” for Butler.
“He was hurting. He got tired. He got tired of the bullying. He got tired of the harassment,” Yesenia Roeder Hall, 17, said. “Was it a smart idea to shoot up the school? No. God, no.”
He shot six people besides himself, including the school principal before killing himself. One of them, a sixth grader, had died.
A sixth grader. Some eleven year old who will never be twelve.
This seventeen year old boy managed to gain access to a shotgun and a hand gun. Without those weapons, whatever arms he could have mustered against his sea of troubles would almost surely have left that sixth grader alive.
Fuck guns. Fuck every enabling asshole who values the almighty firearm over children. Which is to say, fuck just about every GOP official.
I can’t even.
This thread is open. Maybe someone can go far off topic into something happier.
Image: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Fire, 1566
Alison Rose
I second this emotion.
I hate guns. If I became Empress, every gun in existence would be melted down so we could build a two-mile high middle finger aimed at the NRA headquarters.
pat
Shouldn’t there be some way for the adults in the school to notice and do something about relentless bullying of a child? And his younger sister?
Just a tragedy.
Tom Levenson
@pat: Yes there should.
Alison Rose
@pat: In my experience, the response from not all but a non-zero number of teachers to bullying or meanness is “just ignore them”. Which is the least helpful thing to say.
Urza
@pat: Most schools choose to do nothing. Some teachers even encourage it. And there’s not a whole lot the kid being bullied can do unless they’re big enough to put the bully in their place. But, even trying and getting caught gets them punished instead.
I’m glad I graduated pre-Columbine. I’ve often thought of all the bullying I saw what might have happened.
Jackie
I’m waiting for gun owners to openly admit “I love and value my guns more than I love and value my children.”
Chetan Murthy
@pat: Maybe things are different today, but when I was growing up in a small Texas town, teachers never got involved in stopping bullying. And from what I’ve read about it in recent years, teachers don’t do anything today (but hey, those accounts might be the bad cases, ignoring all the good ones where teachers really save the day).
[I’m trying not to imply that things are still the way they were 40yr ago, but] There was an entire culture in the South of “you stick up for yourself or you’re a coward and weakling” etc. And Iowa is enough like the South that I’d expect things to be similar there.
Ah, well.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I just can’t… I’m sick of it and yet there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. It hurts to care because you know it’s going to happen again and again because of our genius founding fathers and their brilliant foresight.
The “more perfect union” isn’t working if our Constitution ties our hands and prevents us from doing anything about the death and destruction it is causing.
@Jackie:
There’s that one father who said he would kill his kids if they turned him in for being a Trump insurrectionist. Being that he probably would have used a gun…
RevRick
@Alison Rose: The whole gun culture is based in the combination of sick fears and warped hero fantasies.
When someone claims they need guns to defend their homes , my first question is, “From whom?” “Your neighbors? If that’s the case, you need better neighbors.” And if they point to nearby cities, I say, “You aren’t worth the bus fare.”
I said that once, and the guy sputtered, “Well, neither are you.” And I replied, “Of course, I’m not.” Which completely flabbergasted him.
Mike in NC
Wife recently asked why was it that when we were kids in the 60s and 70s, nobody ever brought a gun to school. Thank shitbags like Wayne LaPierre, who collect millions every year promoting mass murder.
Alison Rose
@RevRick: And most of the time, those “defending your home” scenarios are their own damn kid coming home late at night or someone at the wrong door or whatever. Hell, even if someone is actually trying to rob you, I must have slept through the day when we made theft punishable by the death penalty. Most robbers are not also murderers. They just want your fucking stuff.
Jay
@pat:
When I was in Junior High, 2 teachers got involved in bullying, bullying the students.
I had a “gang”. We would take breaks and lunch on the benches outside the library. because that was our safe space. Our gang was formed when I beat up a PE teacher who attacked me, for scoring a try against him in his “rugby class”. Never had a problem with the really “tough” kids, because despite my dress pants, crew cut, dress shirt and tie, they knew I was a “tough” and vengeful kid*, A product of abuse at home.
In High School, I had no teacher bullies, no gang, (they all went to different High Schools), only had a couple of tries at bullying me.
*got jumped by 6, when I healed up, waited for them one by one outside their homes.
But yeah, even now, teachers either don’t see bullying, or respond to bullying incidents. They don’t get paid enough. Admin could, but it requires the kid reporting, then dealing, then the parents, easier to sweep it under the rug.
Ohio Mom
@RevRick: I love that moment when you pierce through a right-winger’s defenses. In my experience, as soon as they finish sputtering, their mind snaps shut again but still, it was fun to watch.
laura
Bullying is ignored or encouraged in our society. I’d venture that many here have been bullied. I was bullied as a child and as an adult. It’s painful and isolating and it doesn’t excuse gun violence and the senseless loss of more children. But our Supreme Court’s majority insists that the Founders envisioned an individual’s Right to be shot anywhere at any time and under any conceivable circumstance, so there’s that.
wjca
Pardon me. But, while I understand the sentiment, this is a poor use of resources.
Better use those melted down guns to create some massive weights to crush the guys** who bankrolled the NRA. Because it didn’t convert from advocating for and supporting gun control (which it did in my youth) to being a gun marketing organization spontaneously. It took enormous resources, and that money came from somewhere.
** I don’t normally go for punishing even grown children for the sins of their fathers. But I have a serious temptation to removing these guys’ genes from the gene pool.
coin operated
I have two thoughts…
First…make guns a liability…with prison time if necessary. I do not believe we will ever get a total ban, but make a negligent firearm incident with a weapon registered to you something that will send you into multi-year incarceration.
Second…even without weapons, bullying is killing kids. We need to tighten our enforcement against bullying…it’s the same toxic masculinity evident with the 2A crew.
Columbine was a combo of the two. Two kids, relentlessly bullied, had access to arms.
I’m welcome to correction if I’m off. I’m dealing with some family shit and I might have some vent mode in me.
wjca
Prehaps an automatic charge of “accessory before the fact”. Perhaps including something like California law: if you are involved in the commission of a felony, and someone (anyone) dies, that’s “murder in the first degree.” Even if you were miles away. Even if the only person who dies is someone committing the felony — e.g. if the shooter kills himself, but nobody else dies.
coin operated
@wjca: your amendments are acceptable!
piratedan
@coin operated: I’ve always wondered that if you can have your house insurance rates raised because of a trampoline (unsure if that’s true or not) then why can’t your rates be raised if you have a gun? No one is saying you can’t have a gun, just that if you do, you have to pay a higher rate due to all of the harm that they cause.
Chetan Murthy
@piratedan: i think, the argument goes, because there’s no amendment in the Constitution about trampolines. Ditto automobiles. Etc etc.
scav
Discouraging bullies, forcing politeness down the students necks (along with lunches for poor people), is part and parcel of that lie-beral “woke” nonsense. Real men, real ‘merkan students, know what the second amendment is for. That’s what a polite society is. Perforated.
Craig
@Alison Rose: when I was a kid in rural Virginia we got robbed. At night. They took the 1/4 calf and the blue fish out of the garage freezer. They took 2 chainsaws. They put it all into the two wheel barrows we had. We didn’t notice till the afternoon. Thieves aren’t generally trying to add huge prison sentences using armed robbery and murder to the rap. Thieves know everybody has video systems now.
Steve in the ATL
@Urza: teachers encourage bullying? Really?
Rose Weiss
I grew up in Tennessee. My dad taught me to shoot when I was about 13, and target practice was fun. My dad was an avid and very responsible hunter who was repulsed and disgusted with guys who shot animals for “fun”, I also enjoyed target practice as an adult with my husband and son. But actually all this fun could just as easily been with a bow or a nerf gun. I no longer have any firearms in my house and am definitely supportive of every possible restriction.
RaflW
@pat: “Shouldn’t there be some way for the adults in the school to notice and do something about relentless bullying of a child? And his younger sister?”
The governor of Iowa is a fucking bully. She’s taking food off the tables of vulnerable kids (and their moms or other caregivers). She’s demagoguing trans issues. She signed legislation to remove child labor laws.
I googled her name and the f*cking Reuter’s story about tonight’s shooting had a headline that mentioned Republican prayers.
FUCK. THAT. SHIT. 1,000 right wing pastors in Iowa will wring their hands and say nothing about saving children’s lives from guns.
I’m not despondent. We can turn this thing. But it’s going to take a long time and so much misery is between now and then.
coin operated
@piratedan: I hear you, I really think that gun ownership would have to be in a class all its own…like home, auto, cycle, and rv are all different classes. But make it mandatory…bean counters will have risk assessments and rates out in seconds after such legislation is signed.
Jay
@Steve in the ATL:
Yurp. Dodgeball for example.
It’s not hard for a teacher who has an issue with a kid to set them up for bullying through stochastic terrorism in class, or more direct methods.
In my Junior High, the bottom 3rd floor, (no classrooms, just utilities), the lockers were set aside for the “discipline” cases.
So, after mouthing off (correcting) Mr. Stewart in Algebra, I found my locker assignment moved to the 3rd floor.
ronno2018
So simple for us to just adopt Canadian gun laws and be so much safer. What a nut house of a country the USA is…
gene108
Might explain why the body count is so much lower than mass shootings with assault rifles.
Assault rifles are more lethal than other firearms, like handguns and shotguns. Bullets exist at a higher velocity than handguns, and the ammunition used is usually the same as the ammo used by NATO forces. The combination makes surviving being shot harder.
gene108
Might explain why the body count is so much lower than mass shootings with assault rifles.
Assault rifles are more lethal than other firearms, like handguns and shotguns. Bullets exist at a higher velocity than handguns, and the ammunition used is usually the same as the ammo used by NATO forces. The combination makes surviving being shot harder.
TriassicSands
Most administrators will never be nominated for anything resembling a “courage” award.
Something often learned by teachers is that when you meet the parents of “problem” students, it becomes quite clear why the students are a problem. That isn’t always the case or at least it’s not always obvious, but in my own experience, the parents are usually the root of the problem. That means, if an administrator is going to take action against a bully, he or she will have to confront the parents, who may cause even more trouble. And administrators like to avoid that.
Alternatively, students are often reluctant to tell anyone or admit that they are being bullied. If it is a secret, then even competent administrators can’t do anything.
It is not uncommon for teachers to be so overwhelmed that they don’t have the time or ability to identify who is bullied and who is bullying.
This is all tragic. No kid should be bullied. And bullies should be stopped…period. But there will always be kids who fall through the cracks, which are often chasms.
I don’t know the details of this case, but it the shooter told people and administrators knew, but did nothing, then it would make ugly sense for the shooter to go after adults who let the bullying happen.
School-age kids can be really cruel. Or our society isn’t the best place for children to learn to empathize and be kind.
Roberto el oso
@Jackie: Erik Erikson came close to this when he responded to the grieving father of one of Elliot Rodger’s victims by tweeting: “Sorry for your loss but my 2nd Amendment rights trump your son’s life”.
Ruckus
@Rose Weiss:
I had guns, given to me a very long time ago. Hadn’t had a round chambered in over 50 yrs. I gave them to the police department to be destroyed. One of them had been my dad’s, given to him as a boy. He never fired it as an adult. The county destroys them every year. Piles of them.
Ten Bears
There’s a metaphor in there for those able to see it: the bullied are tired of being bullied
Ruckus
@TriassicSands:
I was very small for my age from encephalitis until a growth spurt as a junior in high school. I went to an all boys high school for freshman year and the shortest freshmen from each shop got called to the stage to be made fun of by the entire school. I told them to fuck off I’m not going up and that if I stood up I was going to walk out the back door. I got bullied, sometimes even by friends, often even by siblings. One friend went too far one day in 5th grade. I lost a friend who found out about fuck around and find out. But no friend fucked with me ever again. My oldest sister found out one day as well. She told me to get my arm off the table. I told her to fuck off. She stabbed me in the arm with a fork. I chased her upstairs and almost put my fist through her door she got shut just in time. She didn’t come out for 2 days. We actually became good friends after she figured out she wasn’t in charge. I was the last person to hug and talk to her about 10 minutes before she passed away from cancer, many decades later. Don’t hold a grudge just because others are assholes. Just make sure they know they are assholes, and give them the time to change. It’s always better than being one.
I don’t know if was the time or the kids but it seems to me that we all have to learn to deal with assholes because some really, really seem to just like to be assholes. Until they don’t. I’m sure some grow out of it, just as sure as I am that some don’t. I met my share in the navy, as did most everyone else but being on a ship with 300+ others and having zero friends is not a good way to be as most of the assholes fucked around and always found out.
Dirk Reinecke
I’m autistic, and my experience with bullying and teachers is that the teachers often do not do anything about the bullying because they approve of it.
If you don’t fit in, or are difficult then the teachers will turn a blind eye because they see the bullying as corrective action. In fact they even encourage it with collective punishment. i.e. the whole class gets punished because of the behaviour of one or two of the students.
m.j.
I remember the Parkland shooting when Kim Reynolds decided it was necessary to stand in front of the cameras and the microphones and recite the NRA Litany.
This is not the time to talk about gun control. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families. We can’t politicize a tragedy. There is no perfect solution.
Lies. All of it.
m.j.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/19/iowa-governor-kim-reynolds-iowa-reasonable-responsible-gun-laws-florida-shooting/351663002/
She’s open to discussion.
Joey Maloney
@Mike in NC: I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, and lots of kids brought their guns to school – long guns, that were left in their car or truck so they could leave school directly to go hunting.
The idea that someone would use that gun to commit mayhem in the school building was never even on my radar at the time.
Princess
@pat: In my experience, bullies at school are tacitly encouraged by the adults around them who indicate who it is safe to target. So yes, but no.
Gvg
Here in Florida it is very much a part of the teacher school culture to stop bullying from happening and teach that it is wrong when they are young. The kids expect administrators and teachers to act when they report something and also the kids try to ostracize bullies. It’s talked about in professional settings too, how to do it, how to handle students and parents. My nephew tells me stories and school is very different for him now than it was for me so many decades ago. His experiences one year in a nearby rural county were very different though and resulted in my sister pulling strings to get him out of it fast. So it is uneven here.
I had the impression this was a national change. Maybe it is uneven everywhere and leadership matters. Remember I am in Republican Florida though. This is fairly recent, I think the last 15 or 20 years and has been gradual, not sudden. Don’t assume schools now are just like they were when you were in even just a few years ago.
Also it does matter who is on the school board and who goes to meetings to keep the radical complainers from being the biggest voices heard. Administrators need to know people have their back when they do something about bullies. How can you help them if the parents of a bully make problems?
Matt McIrvin
Here in Massachusetts, my impression from talking to my daughter is that there’s a concerted effort to stop bullying and it’s been in place since she entered the system. They can’t do everything, but it’s like night and day compared to the situation when I was in school (in Fairfax County, Virginia, a famously “good” public school system in the 1980s), when there were concerted efforts to crack down on fighting but even quite brutal physical bullying was ignored or tacitly encouraged. (A real catch-22, since you couldn’t even defend yourself as the anarchic situation seemed to be encouraging you to do.) Just bothering to tell kids that it’s not OK, rather than quasi-celebrating it as a normal part of life, is a big change.
Victor Matheson
@Gvg: Agreed. My kids’ district had a huge emphasis on bullying prevention. Absolutely a priority. I mean, the previous First Lady thought it was important enough to make it her signature issue. Obviously the irony of a person married to Trump paying lip service to anti bullying was absurdity at its finest, but the fact that she chose that issue demonstrates the attention the issue has gotten.
Procopius
I’m currently watching a Korean TV series called The Glory. It’s heroine is a forty (?) year old woman who was bullied horrendously in high school. She’s pursuing revenge against the people who bullied her. I was never bullied. My sympathies are with the victim. The news story doesn’t say so, but because the principal is one of the fatalities I suspect he knew about the bullying and refused/failed to stop it. I would bet some, if not all, of the fatalities were complicit in the bullying. I guess there’s something wrong with my wiring — I don’t feel strongly about the deaths. Maybe I’ve seen too many. I’m sorry for any of the fatalities who were not complicit in the bullying. The Thai have a saying, “Everybody knows the day they were born, but nobody knows the day of their death.”
Constance Reader
@pat: There are plenty of ways that schools can stop bullying. They just don’t do it.
Ruckus
@Gvg:
How can you help them if the parents of a bully make problems?
I believe that some parents actually encourage their kids to be strong but they don’t explain what that means or they actually have some concept of them being so strong that they end up actually being bullies. I also believe that some people think to be a leader one has to insure that they must be strong, but never really understand what that means. Bullying is not strength, it is trying to be the head of whatever at any cost. Bullying is what SFB is trying to do now and look where it’s gotten him. 90+ charges. When he got elected he thought that made him head bully, and he’s such a waste of protoplasm that he has/is incapable of realizing that when he lost he’s no longer the bully he thought he was – even as he wasn’t ever supposed to be head bully, because no one is.
dnfree
@Steve in the ATL: Sometimes teachers participate in bullying. Way back in the early 1960s I had a Spanish teacher (not native speaker) who was awkward and not very likeable and probably had been bullied herself in school. She sucked up to and favored the popular kids in our class and picked on the nerdy kids who were probably more like what she had been. Sad but true.
It also happened to my children in the 1980s–teachers who would pick the popular kids for a part in a play, or to lead a team, and it became very evident which kids were being repeatedly left out. One daughter came home from school crying from KINDERGARTEN every day because the teacher picked on her and encouraged the other kids to mock her also. We had to change schools. That teacher was in her fifties and just waiting to retire so she could take her pension. She was sick of five-year-olds and it showed.
I guess there are studies now that people who are on the autism spectrum (which wasn’t much recognized as a “thing” in either of those eras) are likely to become bullied. Other students recognize them as “different” even when diagnoses weren’t being made. I’m sure there are other reasons why kids are singled out as well, but this makes sense.