# What the hell is wrong with things in this country? Yet another school massacre! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 22, 2005, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688 "2005-03-22T05:41:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2005, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/61 "2005-03-22T16:37:56Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Kids having too easy access to guns. It depends. With proper discipline and guidance, children and guns can cohabitate without any problems. As an example, we have three young children and (gasp!) a handful of guns. I don’t hide them or lock them up. > [@monstro](#): > > Kids being taught to glorify violence and meanness by the music they listen to, movies and TV they watch, and the role models presented to them from an early age (maybe explains both bullies and school shooters). Totally agree. And that’s why we don’t have cable or satellite TV. > [@monstro](#): > > Kids not having a strong support community to deal with stress. I think “community” is way overrated. We live in a very rural area where there is no “community” per say, and our children are fine. It ultimately comes down to effective parenting skills. > [@monstro](#): > > Adults not picking up the warning signs of impending trouble, and turning a blind eye when they do. Agree. > [@monstro](#): > > Schools being crowded jungles where anonymity and pressures to conform results in alienated students. I don’t know. I think the effectiveness of small class sizes is overrated. > [@monstro](#): > > Neighborhoods with cookie-cutter houses, where no one knows anyone else, maybe does the same thing. Again, I don’t think this matters a whole lot. We don’t know our neighbors, and our children are fine. > [@monstro](#): > > Also, we can’t forget that the media, purposefully or not, makes it seem like these kinds of school shootings are an epidemic. It’s just like when everyone seemed to be getting attacked by sharks a few years back. After 9/11 hit, we didn’t hear anything more about shark attacks. Do you think the “epidemic” suddenly came to a halt? Or was it a manufactured one? Totally agree here. ---
**Author:** ![mailman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8491ac/32.png) [@mailman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mailman)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2005, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/62 "2005-03-22T17:04:26Z")
5 cent psychology here: The kids who act in this way are–uniformly I believe–kids who have had their parents lose control, or maybe more acurately, give over control to the child. When this happens, authority is the enemy–any authority that usurps their own. Why schools? Because schools represent authority. Because school is maybe the one place in your life where consequences occur. You get grades. You get office referrals. You get detentions. You get static from peers. You get assignments that you feel you shouldn’t be asked to do. You get directions you don’t want to follow. The list is long. And if you’re pissed off, you want to get back at somebody; so why not strike back at the place that punishes you, irritates you, seeks to control you? Churches don’t represent a punitive authority, and neither do banks when you’re 15. School shootings occur because parents didn’t do their job. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2005, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/63 "2005-03-22T17:23:25Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Okay, but even if we were only talking about one or two shooting sprees per month, wouldn’t that be a disturbing pattern? Second, I’m curious about your recollections of Ohio, do you have any links? I can’t seem to hunt up the father/son murder, but maybe there’s something about it in one of my yearbooks, I’ll see if I can dig those up, but this would have been before the intarweb was popular so I’m not too sure there’d be anything available. Not exactly something the city would put up to attract people! That was sad. Here’s a later court trial WRT to the [hostage](http://www.aele.org/ewolski.html) incident, that was a little easier to find because I remembered the name. Other info, including something from Parma, [here](http://elfie.org/~croaker/parma.html). But either way, it was a lower-class suburb and we had our share of shootings and such, not at school, but I don’t think it would have really surprised me if it happened even pre-Columbine. And it wouldn’t surprise me if there’d been a shooting there by now, or at least someone bringing a gun in or making threats. > [@](#): > > But wouldn’t the statistics speak towards a trend where brutal crazy kids go nuts in schools, specifically? I don’t know enough about what is statistically significant to say one way or the other. Offhand, a \<5 average with no clear trendline would suggest that… there isn’t enough data. And I would have to wonder which should be included, only kids? --Teachers going nuts? --etc. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2005, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/64 "2005-03-22T17:32:42Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > As to why this didn’t occur in the 1950’s-I dislike it when that decade is used as an example of all that was just and good in America. It sucked-it must have–blacks had no rights; essentially women were dependent on marriage to have a decent standard of living, out of wedlock kids were shamed etc. Ah, yes, the 1950s—the Mother Teresa of decades. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2005, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/65 "2005-03-22T17:51:15Z")
Let’s not forget that the outcome of Columbine could have been different if the two half-wits responsible for that atrocity had managed to wire their propane bombs up correctly. The simple fact is that if somone goes off the deep end decides that they’re going to start killing folks en masse, they’re going to pick the method that is easiest for them to accomplish the task. Guns in many cases are readily available and are “sexy,” but even if you somehow managed to get all the guns off the streets, that still wouldn’t stop someone who was fixated on killing gobs of people. Indeed, the carnage might be worse, since they’d have to resort to things like home made explosives. Even a small bomb, placed next to a propane tank or gas line can have devistating consequences. I think that the source of many of teenagers problems is the contradictory way in which society treats them. They’re told that this is supposed to be the happiest days of their lives, but many of us experienced nothing but misery during that time period in their life. Also, hormones are just starting to kick in, and kids are suddenly _aware_ of things that they never were of before. If you’re raising your kids in a culture where half the influences are denying that teenagers have these kinds of feelings, while the other half is glorifying them it can be difficult for an inexperienced person to sort them all out. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2005, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/66 "2005-03-22T20:04:06Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > It depends. With proper discipline and guidance, children and guns can cohabitate without any problems. As an example, we have three young children and (gasp!) a handful of guns. I don’t hide them or lock them up. > > I think “community” is way overrated. We live in a very rural area where there is no “community” per say, and our children are fine. It ultimately comes down to effective parenting skills. > > Again, I don’t think this matters a whole lot. We don’t know our neighbors, and our children are fine. **Crafter\_Man** , not to deny the solidity of your family, but your children are fine _now_. I’m sure five, six years ago–when this young man was a small child–his parents thought he was fine. All of the boys that shoot up these schools were fine in some period of their lives. I think of it this way: Some people are extremely sensitive to seemingly harmless things. Something that may be innocuous to me may be an allergen to you or 0.5% of the population. Perhaps boys who have a certain disposition (due to genetically- and environmentally-influenced personality traits) are really sensitive to certain environmental conditions, like media violence and peer-group alienation. Give them a gun and _pow_. Just because these things don’t send most of us over the edge doesn’t mean that these things can’t be “allergens” for someone else. ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2005, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/67 "2005-03-22T23:52:26Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > **Seven** : Thanks for the response… But even if kids were frustrated at all the teachers and some of the students, would they still go berserk and kill people randomly who’d done no wrong? Something seems wrong to me with this situation now… and I can’t quite put my finger on it. That, in and of itself, is rather disturbing to me right now. Back then, in my mind, it was all about the groups. The jock group, the geek group, stoners, etc. Each group were like the Borg - they were one. The guy that smacked the back of my head when I was at the drinking fountian was just as guilty as his friends that laughed when he did it. Who I shot might look random to an outsider but it would have been logical targeting to me. If I had snapped and went on a rampage I’d know where to find these people in the lunch room, gym, or between classes. Out of each class I bet Teen Seven on a Rampage could have found 2 or 3 people per room that “must die”. Of course that’s coming from someone who **didn’t** pop and light up the school - just wanted to 80% of the time. Who knows what happens in these minds when they get to the point to actually do it. But knowing what it is like to have a pure hatred for a school and 75% of the people in it, opening up in a lunch room full of teachers and students would seem ok in a mind brought to that level. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/68 "2005-03-23T00:21:04Z")
[History of School Shootings](http://www.columbine-angels.com/other_shootings.htm) It’s an interesting website. Although it lists stories about college shootings and disgruntled adults, it does shatter the myth that school shootings are a recent thing. But equally obvious is that there has been an upsurge in the number of them over the past couple of decades. I do think the copycat factor is involved. Kids nowadays want to be famous for simply being famous, and although school shooters are villified, everyone knows their names. Perhaps the idea of infamy is seductive. Maybe before “pulling a Columbine” became a saying, attention-starved, angry young men did other high-profile things–like holding up liquor stores. When school shootings lose some of its novelty, maybe sociopathic kids will go on to blowing up buildings. ---
**Author:** ![TonyF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9de053/32.png) [@TonyF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonyF)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/69 "2005-03-23T00:54:22Z")
Heh. I catch glimpses of the answer, but no one has nailed it yet. I can say for sure that the monkey-see-monkey-do aspect is wrong. It guides the inspiration; it does not make it. So, please, take “violence in the media” and its derivatives off of the “why” list and place it under “how it will happen.” ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/70 "2005-03-23T01:12:19Z")
> [@TonyF](#): > > Heh. > > I catch glimpses of the answer, but no one has nailed it yet. > > I can say for sure that the monkey-see-monkey-do aspect is wrong. It guides the inspiration; it does not make it. So, please, take “violence in the media” and its derivatives off of the “why” list and place it under “how it will happen.” Care to elaborate on why you think this way? Please? Since you seem to know “the” answer and all… ---
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/71 "2005-03-23T01:38:48Z")
Well. It looks like this guy, in addition to whatever ‘usual’ teenage issues led him to this end, had another wrinkle: [He was a neo-Nazi.](http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/03/22/school.shooting/index.html) > [@](#): > > The idea of Weise’s joining a neo-Nazi group is not as surprising as it may seem, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama. The center tracks hate groups. > > “Believe it or not, we run across this all the time,” he told CNN. “We’ve found Jewish Nazis, gay Nazis, blacks who wanted to be white supremacists. The reason it isn’t so unusual – these are powerless people to whom images of powerful people are appealing.” Now, I think this was a symptom of how off the tracks this kid was, not the main cause of it, and he seems to have taken out fellow Chippewa without consideration as to how “mixed” they might have been, but it certainly adds a new angle. ---
**Author:** ![TonyF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9de053/32.png) [@TonyF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonyF)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/72 "2005-03-23T01:50:27Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Care to elaborate on why you think this way? Please? > > Since you seem to know “the” answer and all… Err, sorry to come off like that. I can’t explain it all; I’m sure there are a few really crazed kids that did copy what they saw, but all but one of the incidences I’ve heard about were because of kids that seemed fed up - not inspired. Just speaking from my own perspective as a troubled youth. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/73 "2005-03-23T13:44:43Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > When school shootings lose some of its novelty, maybe sociopathic kids will go on to blowing up buildings. But are explosives so readily and legally available as guns in the States? The 2nd Amendment refers to arms, as I recall. It’s my understanding that that doesn’t include explosives in the sense of bombs. Any definitive rulings on this? ---
**Author:** ![TwistofFate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@TwistofFate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TwistofFate)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/74 "2005-03-23T14:06:55Z")
[Maybe he just didn’t like Tuesdays](http://www.80smusiclyrics.com/artists/boomtownrats.htm) ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/75 "2005-03-23T14:31:24Z")
If your average teenager can’t make his own explosives, I feel saddened as to the state of education in America. It’s not like it’s hard, for crying out loud. ---
**Author:** ![chique](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@chique](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chique)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/76 "2005-03-23T18:22:04Z")
> [@mailman](#): > > The kids who act in this way are–uniformly I believe–kids who have had their parents lose control, or maybe more acurately, give over control to the child. When this happens, authority is the enemy–any authority that usurps their own. That’s a really bad analogy, especially in this case. The kid’s father committed suicide and his mother is brain-damaged and in a nursing home. At the age of ten he was yanked from Minneapolis to Red Lake. That’s a hell of a lot for a kid to go through. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/77 "2005-03-23T21:23:04Z")
I have trouble crediting the media with causing anything… perhaps it does suggest an avenue of violence to those who are already considering it, and thus makes copycatting more likely… but I don’t think any ammount of rap music or video games or what have you will turn a normal child into a killer. Something has to be seriously wrong in the first place, and restricting law abiding, non crazy people from enjoying pop culture just because some people are sick, seems wrong. I would also question how we can best deal with this. Can we perhaps agree that parents need to take an active role, and that schools need to be even more watchful in regards to bullying and the mental states of their students? (Yes, this is partially troubling as I do not support attempts at mandatory psychological testing for students.) And yes, in this case I’m not sure how much could’ve been done. His sixty some-odd year old grandfather was shacked up with some thirty-something girlfriend, his parents were out of the picture, and he’d fallen into the pit of Nazi ideoogy. Metal detectors at schools might appear to solve this problem, but they wouldn’t deal with situations like those in which students have sniped from woods around the school. Why are these sorts of incidents occuring at a greater frequency than before? And is there anything we can do about it, or is this just a new facet of our reality, like rude drivers and people talking on cell phones? ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/78 "2005-03-23T22:33:59Z")
You might want to check the connection with the media again: Google “Brandon Centerwall” a shrink at U of Wasington, who claims that half the murders in the US can be linked to television, although it ain’t violent tv that causes the problems - it’s tv itself. There’s a lot of controversy about his study and some websites say it’s been debunked, but none the less, it’s very interesting reading. Here’s a link to another site with lots of interesting reading: [http://www.abffe.com/myth1.htm](http://www.abffe.com/myth1.htm) BTW: If the media and Hollywood are so biased in favor of liberal values, how come the conservatives also attack them for causing violence bu producing violent movies and tv shows? ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/79 "2005-03-23T22:46:21Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > I have trouble crediting the media with causing anything… perhaps it does suggest an avenue of violence to those who are already considering it, and thus makes copycatting more likely… but I don’t think any ammount of rap music or video games or what have you will turn a normal child into a killer. Something has to be seriously wrong in the first place, and restricting law abiding, non crazy people from enjoying pop culture just because some people are sick, seems wrong. I don’t know if the above paragraph is related to my post or not, but since I did mention the media, let me try to explain again what I meant. I’m not talking about video games or rap music, or even movies, since I think most people can separate entertainment from reality enough to keep from being unduly incited to violence by it. What I’m suggesting is it’s the “news” aspect of the media that causes much copycat crime by giving people ideas in the first place, and for further motivating them through the momentary fame and attention they derive from their crimes, even if they’re dead by the time it happens. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688/80 "2005-03-23T22:48:55Z")
> [@The Gaspode](#): > > BTW: If the media and Hollywood are so biased in favor of liberal values, how come the conservatives also attack them for causing violence bu producing violent movies and tv shows? Becuase the things liberals do don’t make much sense? 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-things-in-this-country-yet-another-school-massacre/295688.md?page=5)