NationStates Jolt Archive

I am just glad they caught these fucks before they went through with it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051218/ap_on_re_us/school_plot

"LANCASTER, Calif. - Two teenagers were in custody for allegedly plotting to carry out a Columbine-like massacre at their former high school next Valentine's Day, authorities said.
The former Quartz Hill High students, whose names were not released, were arrested Thursday after searches of their homes turned up knives, ammunition, a gas mask and bomb-making instructions downloaded from the Internet, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department."

What's to blame for this behavior? People have been picked on for ages - why the urge for mass violence and mass murder in today's teens? I am at a loss.

Growing apathy and purposelessness, I think. Coming from someone who is probably on the most likely to commit such an act list...

Nihilism and a profound sense of disappointment with society.

The world offers nothing to some people. Just a bland existence for its own sake. Most can cope, but for some, the sense that life has not lived up to expectations, is intolerable. Lacking the mental tools and life experience to express it, the dissatisfaction is directed inwards, with self-destructive behaviour the inevitable consequence.

Making kids feel as though they have a place in society is a difficult thing these days, since it is so anonymous and monolithic.

What's to blame for this behavior? People have been picked on for ages - why the urge for mass violence and mass murder in today's teens? I am at a loss.

Three words:
Extensive media coverage

What's to blame for this behavior? People have been picked on for ages - why the urge for mass violence and mass murder in today's teens? I am at a loss.

Violent Video Games and that evil Rawk Music!

More seriously, these ones seem pretty clearly insane (at least the 15 year-old does) inthe article. In these cases their are two people to blame, normally: School administrationwhich fails to reach out to students, preffering to excise empathy in the name of authority, and the murders themselves, who fail to control their anger, their frustration, and their violence.

I think there is a more simple and humble explanation to this problem.

The fault is mostly to blame for the people who have picked on these kids for ages. Cliques form, kids are cruel to each other, some win and some get sh*t on by what should be their peers. Naturally, this alienation will make them feel resentful, and they will find ways to lash out.

In a way, Columbine was revolutionary. It showed these dissatisfied, pissed off youths that they didn't have to be pushed around, that they could fight back against their bullies and make them hurt, and I mean REALLY hurt. Parent's pep talks didn't. Those adverts in the back of comics that showed the skinny little nerd beefing up and kicking his tormenter's ass didn't work. Self confidence building didn't work. Trying to be popular didn't work.

Getting a gun and taking it out on the people who made them what they are did. They got what they wanted. Revenge. Simple as that.

They took it too far though. Now it involved death.

But you know what? A gun is so much easier than months of weightlifting that might get you muscles, but still no respect or a much deserved ass kicking towards the bully. A gun delivers. It's instant results, instant satisfaction. The shock value alone more than makes up for years of torment.

So why do they do it? It's simple. These kids want revenge, and in a way that's so powerful that nobody can ignore it. They went too far, granted, but who pushed them over that edge? Who made them want to kill? It was what should have been his fellow peers, going out of their way to make their lives miserable, or not telling Johnny Alpha-Male to shut up when he's calling that potential murderer a loser.

How do I know this?

I've felt that way when I was young. I didn't want the media coverage, or the notoriety. I just wanted the son of a b*tch that gave ME a hard time, and all his friends, to pay for what they did. I held back because I knew murder was wrong, but I ask myself how close I was to being another Columbine, or Taber. I know, if I had access to a weapon, I would have been uncomfortably close. I kid you not.

To this day, I still blame those bullies for driving me that close.

More pathetic still, they don't know to this day that the name calling and insults that they casually did and took for granted endangered them as well. That's the real tragity.

I was a scrawny white kid in a mostly black school. I got picked on plenty but I developed a sharp wit and an uncanny ability to turn almost any conversation into a mother joke. I admit to wanting to kick someone's ass or imagining them hurt in some way but I could never bring myself to kill anyone for their words. My success in life is the greatest revenge I will ever have on them. Looking at the updates in the class directory - I enjoy quite a few chuckles when I see those that picked on me still living in the ghetto. Had I killed them, I never would have enjoyed that.

-snip-

While I understand the feeling that many people share about bullying and how it causes all ills in these cases, I feel that it is important that people are careful in how they adress things like this. Whether or not these students where picked on (and I'm sure they were, people are cruel that way), this was still far beyond even the forgivable hate of the tormented. This was a plan to commit murder multiple times over. While empathy towards the abused must always remain, their abuse is not what's at fault, but their own, innexcusable, choice to answer with murder.

The other side of blaming those who picked on them is that the next conclusion people, especially administrators, draw is that the most danger to the wellbeing of students comes from the picked on and geekish. By taking this kind of stance we actually begin to fear the picked on, making their situation twice as bad. This kind of fear occured following Columbine, and it continues to occur across America. The result is "ignore" programs across the country which vilinize the picked on, which is even sicker.

Coming from someone who has been a social scapegoat in the past, I can assure you that while the abusers do carry some burden for their actions, the true blame can only be passed into two sets of hands, the hands of the murderers and the hands of the administration who did not defend them when they needed them most.