Michigan high school massacre

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by mrmaczaps

I've been around guns for 40 years, been bullied but still never shot anyone. The problem is not ours. Its liberals telling little white kids they're racist @ssholes simply for being white. Go pound sand.

No...the problem is raising kids in a world where they expect participation trophies, applause, attention, and benefits for just existing, and adults failing to teach them how to deal with effing life and its difficulties and disappointments and the right way to handle problems and feelings without deciding that someone needs to die for making them feel bad.

And that isn't at all a specifically "liberal" thing, because raising entitled brats is done by a percentage of parents of all political leanings. After all... here's a boy with Trump loving parents who apparently felt entitled to having daddy buy him a gun at 15 -- and not even make him wait until Christmas as a gift? -- and go on a premeditated shooting spree to end lives seemingly at random.

You keep throwing race in there when that hasn't even come up and, though I'm not sure about the 14-year-old, the other kids who died all look white, so... I mean, maybe aside from their major city, Michigan is otherwise a very white state and given its stats that school is too. Maybe you need to go there and protest white-on-white violence. Because no, excusing a white kid for killing other white kids because meanie liberals allegedly, so claims you and the kinds of sources you pay attention to, tell him AND his victims that they're bad for being white... yeah, that isn't adding up. Again.


edit: Buying a gun that a parent intends to belong to their kid may not be a choice we can stop them from making, but I really feel that legally it should belong to the parent only, until the kid is an adult, and be required to be locked up and inaccessible to a minor who is only ever handling it with parental supervision. Not just hand it to a 15-year-old with total disregard for if he's going to toss it in his backpack and go kill people. And if a parent fails that badly on that front... charge the hell out of them.

[frank_one]

Originally Posted by Bahamut810

"Teenagers" should be taught respect for guns, not fear of them or to treat them as some sort of godly takers of life that will get their point across. Add Shooting to PE and let them learn to use the tool.

What? Respect for... guns? For an object? What are you guys even talking about? We need to teach our kids respect for other people, not for guns. Man, that's why America is messed up.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by frank_one

What? Respect for... guns? For an object? What are you guys even talking about? We need to teach our kids respect for other people, not for guns. Man, that's why America is messed up.

I don't think he means "teach respect for guns" in some kind of revered way ("worship the gun!" or whatever). Because that's silly and somewhat troubling. I think he means it the way most people mean it when they say that, as in "to teach basic handling and operation and gun safety of guns, as well as an understanding of how dangerous they can be in the wrong or hands that aren't careful." And this is important for a lot of reasons, especially here in the U.S. where there is the constitutional right to bear arms. Raising kids to be scared of guns they never get to see in person or understand just creates a boogeyman out of guns and the people who bear them in their eyes. This breeds demonization of not just guns themselves but a majority of society here, ignorance, and very stupid talking points to say the least.

[Turo602]

Originally Posted by frank_one

What? Respect for... guns? For an object? What are you guys even talking about? We need to teach our kids respect for other people, not for guns. Man, that's why America is messed up.

What do you expect from a bunch of people who just heard children died in a school shooting and immediately made it about themselves and their agenda? They bitch about liberals while acting like them. It's like a f*cking episode of South Park in here.

[Mayhem]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I don't think he means "teach respect for guns" in some kind of revered way ("worship the gun!" or whatever). Because that's silly and somewhat troubling. I think he means it the way most people mean it when they say that, as in "to teach basic handling and operation and gun safety of guns, as well as an understanding of how dangerous they can be in the wrong or hands that aren't careful." And this is important for a lot of reasons, especially here in the U.S. where there is the constitutional right to bear arms. Raising kids to be scared of guns they never get to see in person or understand just creates a boogeyman out of guns and the people who bear them in their eyes. This breeds demonization of not just guns themselves but a majority of society here, ignorance, and very stupid talking points to say the least.

This. I fired guns when I was younger, a lot younger, yes that was possible in the UK and obviously curtailed a bit in the wake of shootings such as Dunblane and Hungerford. In a controlled environment, with qualified people instructing me, and teaching me to respect the gun because it can, and will harm you and others if you don't use it correctly.

On a secondary more minor note, you can also swap the word "alcohol" in here for "guns" and it would be the same, teaching kids responsible drinking at a younger age (here in the UK while you can't buy until you're 18 you can drink in the company of adults from 12, and the same applies to many other European countries) could mean them not trying to get older kids to buy for them, going completely nuts at college with drinking parties and so forth. Maybe.

[frank_one]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I don't think he means "teach respect for guns" in some kind of revered way ("worship the gun!" or whatever). Because that's silly and somewhat troubling.

I hope you are right, you usually are. It just hit my brain that three kids died and the first thing that a person says is "we should teach our kids how to use guns" and not just "that's horrible and it keeps happening. We'd better not let kids use guns". Just that.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Originally Posted by Turo602

What do you expect from a bunch of people who just heard children died in a school shooting and immediately made it about themselves and their agenda? They bitch about liberals while acting like them. It's like a f*cking episode of South Park in here.

This exactly. It's quite disheartening, but thats to be expected from this forum.

[IMJ]

Respect for guns means teaching that they are a tool for defense and protection of property and not an outlet for vengeance or other negative emotions. And in doing so, the teacher should be imparting the values of living and let live.

Hence "have respect for the gun" meaning in it's intended function in perseverance of life; on those merits rather than any other banal self-serving outlet.

[frank_one]

Originally Posted by FredWolfLeonardo

This exactly. It's quite disheartening, but thats to be expected from this forum.

Nah, it's not this forum. This place is full of good people. It's our society (both in Europe and USA from what I see) that is constantly pushing us to take sides and to fight each other like we were in a big civil war. But we are not.

Originally Posted by IMJ

Respect for guns means teaching that they are a tool for defense and protection of property and not an outlet for vengeance or other negative emotions.

Very good points, you've touched the main topics here. Weapons should only be used as a defence tool. Also, emotions and guns should never go together. Now, the big question: how you teach these stuff to a teenager? Teenager are known to be very bad at taking their emotions under control. Obviously, not all of them will go down the streets killing people whenever they have a bad day but few of them are more problematic and more inclined to an aggressive behavior under certain mental circumstances. Our society needs to prevent those ones from obtaining a gun. How? Are a couple of words of advice from a parent enough? I say schools and psychologists should be involved.

[Bahamut810]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

"to teach basic handling and operation and gun safety of guns, as well as an understanding of how dangerous they can be in the wrong or hands that aren't careful."

This is exactly what I meant and had nothing to do with the deaths, specifically with the comment about "teenagers should never have guns." It may be the places I grew up and where I live now but "respect guns" round abouts means that.

Originally Posted by frank_one

Weapons should only be used as a defence tool.

And a hunting tool, and an entertainment tool for people who like target and skeet shooting. Guns have a lot of uses.

[Autbot_Benz]

They are searching for the parents who have been charged with involuntary manslaughter

The mom is a real piece of work

The day after Thanksgiving, he and his father had gone together to a Michigan gun shop to buy it. He and his mother spent a day testing out the gun, which was stored unlocked in the parents’ bedroom. On Monday, when a teacher reported seeing their son searching online for ammunition, his mother did not seem alarmed.

“LOL I’m not mad at you,” Jennifer Crumbley texted her son. “You have to learn not to get caught.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/u...-shooting.html

[Sumac]

I am surprised they didn't go to shot someone as a family unit.

[IndigoErth]

Wow, so they're going to hide out and make it worse for themselves.

“You have to learn not to get caught.”

Ohh... I see.

“My new beauty,” Ethan Crumbley, 15, called it.

What happened to the days when the thing most 15-year-olds wished to be able to say that of in the near future was a car...

On the morning of Tuesday’s shooting, the suspect’s parents were urgently called to Oxford High School after one of his teachers found an alarming note he had drawn, scrawled with images of a gun, a person who had been shot, a laughing emoji and the words “Blood everywhere” and “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”

School officials told the parents during the in-person meeting that they were required to seek counseling for their son, Ethan, Ms. McDonald said. The teenager’s parents did not want their son to be removed from school that day, and did not ask him whether he had the gun with him or search the backpack he brought with him to the office, Ms. McDonald said.

“The notion that a parent could read those words and also know their son had access to a deadly weapon, that they gave him, is unconscionable, and I think it’s criminal,” she said.

He was allowed back to class.

The school is not to blame in what happened, but I feel like they should have put their foot down with the parents and refused to allow him to go back to class or remain in school that day. Nor to even return without a note from a psychiatrist.


edit: Some article I saw the other day mentioned he was active on YouTube as a young kid... a lot of it via posting videos playing Call of Duty.

Now I'm not one of those "video games cause all this" kind of people and MOST normal older teens and adults probably aren't going to get warped by that kind of game unless they already have mental issues, questionable or lack of understanding of right and wrong, and can't separate reality from fantasy. But I'm sorry, a child young enough to have a brain that's still developing in some fundamental ways has NO business playing games of that nature. Not when there are so many other awesome games that are far more appropriate for kids. If he was addicted to playing some game that role plays a theme of murdering people, I can see how that could help eff up the head of a young kid.

But I guess it's unsurprising with that particular set of parents... Sad.

[Leo656]

Every single time this happens, there's a million red flags out the ass which all screamed "This person is severely mentally-disturbed", along with the knee-jerk "Never MY son!" reaction from clueless parents.

We need to be a lot more proactive in hawking people who display obvious mental instability. We've gotten away from that because we don't want to be "judgmental" or make them feel like "outcasts", so we mostly just leave them alone. But "back in my day", any kids who acted "off" were well-known to school officials, watched closely and kept on a short leash. Most of them were in remedial groups for "troubled" kids and kept far away from everyone else, and most of those kids did in turn grow up to become career criminals who never integrated into society. BUT, as far as I know they never killed anyone else (although a couple of them did end up killing themselves).

A lot has been and continues to be said about whether that approach was "correct" or not, and whether all it did was make these "outcast" kids feel even more like outcasts by basically acknowledging to them, "Yes, you're 'worse' then the other kids, you don't fit in and never will, and we're keeping you away from them because we're concerned you're going to hurt someone, based on every single precedent of your behavior." Maybe the fact those kids all grew up to be drug dealers and criminals does in some way mean the system failed them.

OR, it could mean that everyone saw a rotten apple early on and kept it far away from the non-rotten apples so as to slow the spread of contamination. Because I don't care what anyone says, SOME people are just plain rotten from Day One. Whether that's genetics, bad upbringing, a head full of bad wiring, or some combination of all of it, some people were looked at like "lost causes" at a young age and were treated as such. And maybe that is mean. BUT. Again, none of those specific individuals ever killed anyone. A few got expelled for saying they'd thought about it, but never followed through. Never got the chance to. So perhaps "writing them off" and keeping them away from the kids who actually did have a future to look forward to wasn't the worst idea.

No easy answers. I just know that things like this never used to happen, and now they happen a lot. There's not more guns, so I look for other variables. Lack of basic respect for other people, definitely a ton of that now. Complete inability to cope with things not going your way, 100%. Dehumanizing or "un-personing" people for incredibly nebulous reasons, certainly. Failure to take notice or action towards clearly disturbed individuals because "We don't want to make them feel bad", for sure.

I just can't help but notice how EVERY single time this happens, it's always some kid who should've been expelled and in jail and/or counseling way before things ever got so far out of hand. People keep dropping the ball on that, and I can only assume it's out of "not wanting to treat them like they're bad kids". Except some of them definitely are, and should be treated as such BEFORE they get to do things like this. Who cares if they feel bad? They openly want to kill people, they SHOULD feel bad. Someone needs to do something to either rewire their brains so they can act right OR just get them out of civilized society before they hurt someone. But nobody does anymore.

[Andrew NDB]

The problem is that they don't want to label anyone with mental illness... they're just special and unique and their truth is different than your truth. And they're only into releasing everybody from jail/prison, not putting new people into it.

[Leo656]

And that's weird considering how even if it's "just" depression/anxiety, clinical studies in recent years have overwhelmingly proven that the vast majority of human beings struggle with some type of "mental illness" and that nobody is actually "wired right" in the first place. Some people are just better at coping/compartmentalizing. But essentially, everyone is "mentally ill" and therefore there's supposed to be LESS of a stigma around diagnosing and discussing it, not more of one.

Either way, one thing I know for a fact about mental illness is that trying to wish it away and/or circumvent it with positive reinforcement and ass-pats absolutely does not work. And by the time someone is even making comments or threats about acting out in a violent manner, it's already kind of too late.

[IMJ]

I'd like to point out something that.... I would bet most people here do not know, and bare minimum might have some inkling of but haven't put the concept into play here....

Kids go and do things when they are presented with new information. And in some ways, it's the same kind of behavior as office sheep who hear some fringe, opportunistic edict from their boss ("we should use this tool") and then for like three weeks the more bellicose employees broadcast and project ludicrously that thing that was presented to them as a "behavior" option.

There are other examples of this on the same spectrum of analytics - for example, studying psychology at some point along the way you'll hear about studies where people adopt traits that other people put onto them. Call someone a criminal enough times they oddly enough enact criminal behavior. Tell a kid that he scored high on the verbal/word component of his standardized testing and out of nowhere the kid begins to force bigger words into his conversation where he didn't before. All because he read a paragraph on a test and scored in the 90th percentile.

People are.... more like blank templates open to personal reinforcement than any one of us are probably comfortable enough to admit. And this especially true in, whether you like it or not, the mental midgets of society - groups of children, institutionalized people and low information people. An example here that everyone can identify with - even they don't admit it openly - in another thread here there was a conversation about whether or not a company was going to put TMNT weapons on connected weapon racks and from that the conversation went into an inordinate and borderline nonsensical use of the word "sprue". It was like a series of people trying the word out in any sentence they could, either to onboard with the group or because it was their personal proof that they understood the word.

My point?

That's a level of mentality at which these things happen in schools. Kid is picked on, kid is angry, kid has gun exposure, gun exposure is normalized, kid uses gun. It's like "karate". Nobody in their right mind has an honest "karate fight" - you just go in and combine street fighting with some moderate skill, that's the reality. But some kid in school gets into a fight by the bike rack, and the kid who goes to Karate on Wednesday's goes into karate form. It's front loaded as "the thing to do". But he gets his ass beat by some undisciplined punk kid who was out for blood and peer-power-status.

It's a spread of examples I've given here, but they are all the same spectrum. Go tell your fat kids that they are athletic and the next thing you'll see is them suddenly trying to do push-ups somewhere until their laziness or whatever it is brings them back into their previous patterns.

We invite this $#!( by not being good teachers.

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

The problem is that they don't want to label anyone with mental illness...

I don't know about that, given the push in the past decade or so to try to destigmatize it and make it less taboo to discuss or get help and to an extent society does openly discuss it more than it used to.



While he has zero sympathy after what he did, because he damn well should know right from wrong, I do still feel for the kid he was before all this if had had terrible and uncontrollable compulsive thoughts and issues that no adults around him were willing to face and get him help for, even if he resisted.

At least the school did try to address it with his parents instead of suspending him. But to just leave him in class after that...

[Leo656]

The one mental illness nobody likes to acknowledge is Sociopathy. Because it clouds the "all people are inherently Good until some external force ruins them" narrative that some feel-good types try and push.

Problem is, Sociopaths exist and nobody still knows exactly Why. Cases can and have been made for both Nature and Nurture. In my experience, it's more Nature, although Nurture can certainly reinforce it. But the point is, Sociopathy exists, and Sociopaths exist, and you can't effectively "teach" empathy to a person who sincerely believes that their only responsibility in life is in indulging their own impulses and everyone else can be damned.

Like, if you've ever actually known a "real" one, Sociopaths are fascinating (and terrifying) people. Even in just having a conversation with one, it's amazing what you discover. But the whole "Only I matter, and how my actions affect other people is no concern of mine" bit always stands out super-hard. They simply don't have the mental capacity to understand why anything they do is "wrong"; in their minds, it got them what they wanted or just plain made them feel better in the moment, and that's all that matters, therefore it's the "right" thing to do.

It's hard to try and explain how people like that aren't "bad people". By definition, they are very bad people. BUT, admitting that not everyone is a decent human being runs very contrary to what we're being taught anymore, so on one hand it makes sense why you never hear anyone say "This person was just plain a sociopath" and instead try and pinpoint any one of a dozen other "reasons" why they do things. But sometimes it's just that simple. But you can't SAY that, because it skews the narrative.

I feel like if we collectively admitted that some people are plain Bad we could actually make more progress with this kind of thing. Instead we get hung up on "HOW could they do it?" and "HOW could they not even feel bad about it?" Well, there's very simple reasons How, actually, you just have to stop pretending that human nature is fundamentally decent. I'd argue that it isn't in general, but definitely not in many individual cases. Some people are plain rotten; pretending otherwise until it's too late does no one any favors.

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by Leo656

you just have to stop pretending that human nature is fundamentally decent. I'd argue that it isn't in general

Ehhh I dunno, if human nature was inherently bad as a majority, I doubt human society would come this far. Bad as people think it is now, I doubt we'd have gotten past living some barbaric, primitive life if it was normal human nature to totally disregard any needs and well being of others. Sure, some today want to watch the world burn, but still the majority wouldn't. I think the minority of nutcases who do are just simply louder and more, uh, demonstrative, for lack of a better word, in their making a mess of things.