Advice for the next high school assassins

In My Humble Opinion
21

Dear Future Killer
Don’t do it. They die, they become heroes, and you’re still the reject, but now the whole world hates you. And you’re either dead, or in jail for life. You shoot them, and you still lose.
You do not have a problem that thousands of others haven’t been through. Most of the others tough it out, and get on with their lives. Shooting people is the easy way out. You have to be weak to take the easy way out. Be strong. Live with it. Eventually, you won’t be in school any more, and you won’t see these people anymore. In case you do see them, strive now to get ahead in life. The best revenge is not revenge. The best revenge is living well.

I know I hate to see my enemies prosper.

22

I’ve never done it. I probably will never do it. That the right people think I might do it is enough. I like playing with the idea - I find it very satisfying and quite healthy. It obviates the need to look for revenge in more extreme forms.

23

Dear Future Killer,

Avoid your bully long enough that when they die, nobody will come looking for you as a potential killer. If they ever do, claim some slight bullying “a long time ago.” Rather then committing murder in a very public place, simply make sure you have a pretty good alibi, surprise the victim somewhere deserted (a dark alley, empty sidewalk, anything really) place the gun directly against some soft tissue to minimize noise, and quietly slip away. Don’t use any tracable weapons. Be careful to leave nothing behind, and take nothing (blood) with you. Be a good actor. You can only do it once, and you can’t kill anyone that has picked on you badly or publicly or for a long time.

Don’t Kill Me Cause I’m On Your Good Side,
Ooner
[Disclaimer: this isn’t really serious advice, though it does make a lot more sense than blasting 13 strangers in a crowded hallway]

As far as real advice goes, I think most of it has already been said. Nobody will understand the problems you had if you give them the impression you’re just some sick fuck. It’s sad that sometimes the bad guys win, and you get picked on, therefore becoming the loser. The best way to fix the problem is to change the way you view it. Stop caring about what those people think of you and worry more about what your friends and family think. I’d much rather impress my parents than some dumbass at school that has nothing better to do than pick on me. You already know that you have the power to kill anyone you want, so there’s no need to prove it, especially injuring other people in the process. As corny as it sounds, you’re stooping to the bully’s level. Just be really glad that you aren’t like that.

[Disclaimer 2: That was so corny, I think I’m going to be sick. Don’t ever have me talk to a dangerous armed loner, cause I think that speech might drive him to shoot me first.]

24

Find a good place to dispose of bodies, have airtight alibis, and start eliminating your tormentors on the QT.

I could never understand these mass shooter’s logic:

[ul]
[li]Someone’s making me miserable.[/li][li]I have had enough.[/li][li]So I will kill anyone/everyone at random.[/ul][/li]
:confused:

25

Initial Entry makes a good point here. IMO, if school shooters really wanted revenge on specific individuals, that’s what they’d do. The theory I agree with is that the main goal of school shooters (and workplace shooters, and go-to-some-public-place-and-shoot-everyone shooters) is to end their own lives. But without just plain committing suicide. (That wouldn’t be manly.) They want to go out in a blaze of glory, taking others with them.

They are almost guarenteed sucess, in that they will either be gunned down by the cops, or spend all or most of the rest of their lives in prison. Either way, they’ve ended the life they were living, pre-shooting.

My advice would be, if you MUST kill yourself, please kill ONLY yourself. But really, why do you think death or prison are the only ways out? As others on this thread have said, freedom and quite possibly a pretty good life await you beyond H.S. graduation. And if you can’t stick it out that long, why not just run away? Live on the streets of a big city. This will be a dangerous life, but that shouldn’t be a problem to someone who thinks death would be better then the life he has.

26

The advice that if you kill 'em, you just make the bastards into martyrs is good, and I agree. So you decide that a single moment of what you think will be sweet revenge will in all probability turn out to be far messier and damn sight less satisfying than it had looked when you fantasized about it, and after that, if you don’t just up and blow yourself away afterwards, you have a lifetime in prison to learn what it’s really like to be picked on; so you don’t do it. Good for you, you’ve made the right decision.

That brings us to the difficult part: how do you survive the rest of your time in high school? I have no idea. I never had to deal with being the picked-on kid in high school, 'cause I was funny enough to mask my social retardation. I’d think that the key is to find some outside validation, though, or even just perspective. Expand your horizons. Learn about the world outside of high school, so you can better get a handle on the shit you put up with every day. What makes high school so hellish is that it consumes a kid’s life. Shit, it is a kid’s life. So that when you get to the point where you want to blast someone’s face off, you naturally think first of school. To avoid reaching that point, I’m thinking you’d want to expand your worldview beyond your school, or your town, or your state. The internet would be a godsend in this regard, 'cause you can read about, or talk to (if you can dial down the rage enough to communicate effectively) people all over the place who are going through the same shit. Or worse. And find out how people lived through it to become successful, or didn’t live through it and why, and take lessons from both.

Not that I know what I’m talking about, but that’s my thought.

27

This topic definitely strikes close to home, I was picked on all through high school (probably comes from graduating as the top student in my school in grade 8, but oh well).

I also suspect it is simply an attempt at a “glorious end” version of suicide rather than revenge. If it were revenge, you’d think that someone being picked on would be smart enough to plan something a little more, shall we say, slow and painful for the individual that tormented them to suffer. Not to mention something a little less conspicuous.

However, I agree totally with the zero tollerance policy idea. Mind you, I also disagree with high school for the most part. I lean more towards the self education idea for those that are smart enough to do so.

28

There are platitudes and there are profundities but I couldn’t say which category this thought fits into: justifiable revenge has become a motif of popular culture. JR Ewing started it all in the early 80s and just about every major male movie star has acted out the role of the worthy revenge seeker. The idea that revenge is allowable has been literally been inculcated in teenagers. While I do believe that I also agree with the (possibly unusual) opinion that the only way some young people know anything about human behavioural ideals is through American television. Some people have such apalling upbringings that the only experience they have of love and affection and morality is from seeing it enacted on sitcoms and family shows.

29

There are platitudes and there are profundities but I couldn’t say which category this thought fits into: justifiable revenge has become a motif of popular culture. JR Ewing started it all in the early 80s and just about every major male movie star has acted out the role of the worthy revenge seeker. The idea that revenge is allowable has been literally been inculcated in teenagers. While I do believe that I also agree with the (possibly unusual) opinion that the only way some young people know anything about human behavioural ideals is through American television. Some people have such apalling upbringings that the only experience they have of love and affection and morality is from seeing it enacted on sitcoms and family shows.

30

Wow, sorry. I didn’t know that could happen.

31

I don’t need to revise anything. As I already stated above:

Now, that doesn’t sound like someone who’s saying: “all kids that suffer emotional problems because they’re being picked on ought to just kill themselves”, does it?
Obviously, I was referring -quite literally- to the OP.

If they’re already armed and ready, and they’re going to pull the trigger anyway, then yes, I’d prefer a suicide over the killing of numerous, and often even random, individuals.
It doesn’t make the situation less sad, but it would save lives if the kid with the gun is going to shoot anyway.

32

Ah, but I don’t think it was stipulated that the kid’s going to pull the trigger. It’s probably more useful to look at it as though you’re trying to figure out what would make the kid opt not to kill anyone.

By the way, G. Nome, good thread. Thumbs up.

33

  1. Report to someone at your school that one of your tormentors has been threatening to get you in serious trouble, and made some veiled reference to Columbine. Even if they aren’t going to do anything about it, do what you can to get evidence that you told them about this.

  2. Sometime in the next couple of days, isolate said tormentor - shouldn’t be too hard to catch them alone or with only a friend or two with them. Threaten them with gun, make them get on their knees and plead for mercy. Make some seriously hardcore threats to them and their families if they give you any more shit - the more violent and out-of-character for you, the better. Then leave. Lose the gun (BTW, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a functional gun).

  3. Either they will report you or they won’t. If they do, their accusations will have to overcome the fact that (A) you have never been the violent type and (B) you already reported that you were afraid they were going to try and get you in trouble, probably hoping to exploit the paranoia due to current events. If they do report you, they could very well get in serious trouble themselves. If they don’t, they are scared of you now and will probably leave you alone.

34

Tough one.

I can’t relate to the US high school experience for the simple reason that I’m European, but I believe being put down in school is universal. I sure as hell did not hang out with the cool crowd for my three years of “Gymnasium” education. And I would have loved to. Wasn’t as much picked upon as left out in a lot of ways.

A couple of things helped me out: School was school, and I moved in other circles in my spare time - Scouts, Home Guards etc. There, other people trusted me with pretty heavy responsibilities - budgets, firearms, their kids, even - and in that perspective the popularity games were just that, games.

I believe you need to trust young adults with real-life, hard-core responsibilities, and I believe most of them will exceed expectations when you do so. If there’s school and not much else in their lives, and if you govern school so strict that you’re in effect telling them “You’re kids and nothing of real consequence will happen here”, you’re in effect giving them carte blanche to play power games on that very restricted turf. Our school rules stated clearly that we were supposed to be students, not pupils, and were expected to actively try to educate ourselves. If we disrupted that process, we should consider hanging out somewhere else. (Man, I’m putting this badly…)

Of course, school sports was nothing special - sports, apart from PE, was something you did in your spare time. Likewise, some of the American-type institutions for cool kids - homecoming queen & the like - has never been practiced here.

If you can arrive monday morning in the knowledge that you gave 25 scouts a great experience, although it was pissing down, one telt blew away and Mike got homesick as usual, why should you CARE that someone’s poking fun at your uncool backpack ? It bounces off.

Get the friggin’ focus away from the social elements of school and the school crowd, do something at which you excel in your spare time and shrug at the “in” crowd.

Of course, none of this helps when a teenager has picked up a gun. But by then, it’s too late for advice, except possibly “Put it down, now!”.

S. Norman

35

You could tell them that it will get better after high school, but it might not. There are the almost chiched postal worker killings that show that for some people, it doesn’t get better.

And while I agree with Coldfire that it would be better for these kids to kill themselves rether than hurt anyone else, I hope for a better solution than suicide. Every single life is precious. But what is that better solution?

If you loathe yourself and revile those who remind you of that self-loathing, sometimes things just may be too difficult to bear. In this thread, Zenster asks for opinions on how to love yourself. It is much easier to love yourself if you come from a home where you received unconditional love, and that is so rare.

I am agnostic, but I think the Prayer of St. Francis speaks volumes as to how to help prevent tragedies: be an instrument of peace, where there is hatred, sow love. There didn’t seem to be enough love to go around for those boys from Columbine High School.

36

I think a lot of good stuff has been said here, but I have some doubts as to how effective some of the advice would really be. The idea that high school will be over with in a few years, and most likely the tormented will never have to see or deal with their tormentors again is true, and very easy to see from an outside perspective, but these are teens we’re talking about. Four years from now doesn’t exist. Four years from now is an eternity. Four years from now might as well be when the apes rise up and subjugate mankind, they want to know what to do about tomorrow morning, when the beatings start again.
The same thing applies to telling someone that ‘others are experiencing the same thing’. I can imagine a kid coming back with “Big deal - other kids get picked on, too. That in no way lessens what is happening to me, and I can’t take it anymore. I just want them to shut up, I just want them to leave me alone, and I want it to stop RIGHT NOW!”
I honestly think that by the time a child has made a decision to pick up the gun to deal with his or her problems, it’s too late to really do anything about it. So if I had any advice to give, it would be to the parents:

You have to be parents for your children. You have to teach them that killing people is wrong. You have to teach them that human life - all human life is sacred, and must be respected. It is not an accident, it is not disposable because you find it inconvienient or unpleasant. You have to teach them the difference between right and wrong from the day they are born. Kids don’t need relativism, they have enough to worry about without adding the pressure of deciding the morality of a situation. They need a solid foundation on which to base how they interpret the ‘grey’ areas that will come along. They need to be given the skills to decide what constitues a ‘grey’ are in the first place. They need to be told repeatedly ‘this’ is good, you should do this, ‘that’ is bad, do not do ‘that’. Also, you have to set the example for them. If they see you doing ‘that’, and/or not doing ‘this’, your message will be meaningless. You have to instill in them the self-esteem needed to deal with the barbs and arrows that life will throw at them.
There’s more I could say, I’m sure, but I won’t bore you with it (and I’m at work right now, and busy).

37

Ah logic. Unfortunately the tormented souls that inflict humanity on itself are not capable of rational, logical, thought. If they were, they’d realize that high school ends in a few short years. And so will being bullied.

<engage self pity>Now as a formerly tormented soul myself, I have far too much insight into this field. <okay, enough of that>

The people who snap and start killing their peers? They’re just following the old golden rule: Do unto others as they’ve done unto you. The problem here is not with a child who has access to firearms; it’s with teachers, parents, and a school culture that worships and respects bullying and social cutting.

38

I’m the one who said that. I should have been more clear. One of the worst things about HS is the sheer loneliness of it. I went to a big HS (2300 people) and it still seemed like each person managed to live in thier own private hell. If we had recognized that it was a mutual hell, I think life would have been better; in fact, my senior year the UnderAchievers Club did just that - we extracted some comfort from the fact that, well, it sucked for all of us.

The other point I was trying to make is that, in HS, it seems like the inmates are in charge of the asylum. After Columbine, there were news stories of people being sent home for wearing all black. Any teenager is going to sit there thinking “Is this sane? Is this going to help? Am I the only person in the world who recognizes how assinine a policy this is?” The answers are no, no, and no. What message does this send? Here is the message it sends - “Your tormentors are correct. You are not allowed to be different. You are not allowed to scare us. We have no tolerance. We have no empathy. We have no understanding. You will toe the line, or, not only will your tormentors hurt you, we, the adults, the most powerful beings in your universe, will do the same thing.” That is the sort of message that sends bright kids to chemistry classes looking for ways to make explosives. That is the message that I am trying mute, to undo. I want to say to HS’ers: “Think the whole system is crazy? Yep, you’re right. The world doesn’t work the way HS does. In the world past HS, you’ll have the opportunity to find a real peer group; you won’t be forced to be around people who, for no readily apparent reason, hate you.”

I am well aware of how long four years is. I remember far too well the multiple eternities that high school took. I remember lying awake at 3:00 in the morning, just being angry. I survived by reading - there is a full field of literature and cinema that helped me get through it, from The Count of Monte Cristo to Heathers. I strongly recommend wallowing in that field, and keeping your eyes on that goal.

Not much good advice, but it worked for me.

39

My advice?

*Shoot for the groin or the legs. If you just kill them, their potential suffering ends immediately, and their parents and sycophants get to turn them into martyrs after the fact. Wound them, and let them deal with the pain and disfigurement for the years to come.

*Don’t shoot indiscriminately. Have a specific set of targets, people who really took it upon themselves to put you through hell. I suppose it’s a debatable point- if one shoots anyone at random, then all future students need to be careful to make sure no future bullying occurs, because any of them could be a target. Still, you might end up shooting someone you like and/or respect, someone with few faults and easily turned into a martyr to counteract the demonization you’ll receive after the fact. Better to focus on those who hurt you the most, so that your causes are that much easier to see. Still, make sure you’ve got a good dozen people on your list- shoot one or two people, and it never gets beyond the local news (see the blip that was Harrisburg, PA; or the recent shooting in Largo, MD that was ignored by the national news).

*Turn yourself in. Blow your own brains out at the end of it all, and you never get to give your side. Your motives will be vague no matter how many notes you leave, and advocates from all causes will ascribe to you the motives they need you to have (“It was about the bullies!” “It was about media violence!” “It was about rock music!”). Stay alive, turn yourself in, and be vocal and firm in your statements about the why and the wherefore of your actions.

*Simplify, simplify, simplify. Again, if you want your cause to make news, keep it simple. If you’re railing against bullies, don’t listen to ‘death metal’; keep it on classical music. Don’t play violent video games; play Solitare or other card games. The more possible reasons you leave, the less likely that anyone will understand what to do (see Columbine, where so many people decided there were so many reasons that no one actually did anything about any of them).

*Finally, decide if this is really what you want to do. Believe it or not, high school does end. And if you hate your parents and don’t have friends, there’s always the possibility of going away to a large college where you can be away from parents and make new friends. Fifteen years from now, what you’re going through will just be an ugly scar, with a scab on it that you pick at during the deep, dark portions of the night. But it’ll be mostly gone, and you can actually have a real life with real friends and real love afterwards. Go through with the shooting, and you won’t get that. You’ll get a life in prison, which is where they put the big bullies. And you won’t have easy access to firearms in order to equalize things anymore. So it’s definitely for the best not to go through with it.

But if you do, see my first four points.

Sincerely,
John

(Who is not at all bitter about the shit that was pulled on him in Junior High by his peers and his family. Oh, no. Not at all.)

40

You aren’t the only one. According to this CNN story, a majority of kids of all ages from 8 to 15 think that teasing and bullying is the biggest problem at school. An even larger majority say they have witnessed bullying and teasing at their schools.