Who do you blame for school shootings: The Bullies Or The Shooters?

Why not all of those options?

Quentin Tarantino.

OP for continuing to make bad threads

And Grand Theft Auto.

the parents

While you can argue that if the shooter wasn't bullied he wouldn't have gone to school and shoot his bullies (among others) that still doesn't relieve them of the fact that they was the shooter acting out in a hostile act. But at the same time, if the person decided to kill themselves instead of shooting other children in their school people may be more willing to blame the bullies that drove them to suicide.

I think it's a little bit of the parents and shooters fault as well as the school's fault. If school's would monitor the way students behave in school like making threats like say in the Virginia Tech shooting or in the Columbine shooting for example, these things probably would have never happened. You really can't tell when these things can happen like the shooting where that kid shot his mom and went to the elementary school and started shooting at children. I don't blame videogames or music being as I listen to music that is explicit and games that are violent but never have thought about acting out those things.

Neither; I probably blame society with parenting (or lack there of).

For example,

In modern day society male children are generally taught not to show emotion. Take this psychotic teaching and add a lack of parenting in the home leads to nothing but trouble.

Don't believe me watch this type of scenario in real life. If there's two children (1) female, (1) male, and both fall. Typically the parent(s) well run towards the female child, and be like "Oh my God baby! Are you ok?", and if it's the male it's like "GET UP! Boys don't cry; act like a man", and this is assuming the individual male child even has a stable family (marriage).

You shouldn't tell a child whether male or not they should hold their emotions. That doesn't sound mentally healthy even for adults, which can lead psychotic/sociopath tendencies due to their lack of teaching.

There are several contributing factors but there is only one person (or people in the case of more than one criminal) responsible for the deaths/injuries.

Instead of trying to find someone/something to blame (other than the person who perpetrated the crime) American's should be looking towards preventing these things in the future and not being desensitized to the ongoing violence.

I blame a society that doesn't do enough to help and protect against mental illness. We need to work on better screening methods and ways in which to help these individuals with mental illness to heal. We could also use a better at home support structure for many of these kids to better help them properly develop.

Agreed.

Marilyn Manson.

Just out of curiosity, have there been any reliable studies on how many of these shooters are actually mentally ill?

I blame Jesus

The shooters.

Being bullied does not inherently mean mental illness. Have any studies conclusively said mental illness was the cause?

Can't do that, freedumz and all that. Nope the best thing to do is simply mourn when it happens and go on with our lives. That or perhaps issue everyone a gun from the day they are born. I mean if every kid in school had a gun the chance of stopping a shooter would go up significantly. They should also be made to always wear body armor. It will make the school feel extra safe.

I blame the Government and Obama for not allowing guns in schools. If students were allowed to carry guns none of these shootings would occur.

The only thing stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Semper Fi

It isn't guns, it isn't the school for lack of security, it isn't the school administrators.

We need more education about mental illness, and parents to be more involved in their children's lives. How often in these stories do you hear, "We had no idea he would do something like this." Are there not any signs of hoarding weapons, explosives, strange behavior, internet usage?

Most people probably don't know warning signs of mental illness, so they probably go completely ignored. Sadly, our government on the federal and state levels has little interest in mental illness education.

It would also increase the amount of shootings. when something bad happens to you (e.g being bullied at school) you calm down after a while. But if you have a gun in hand and the bully is right there in front of you, you'd be more likely to take the shot.

Fantastic idea!

I say it's a combination of the shooter's psyche and the shit treatment of people with mental problems.

I can't blame the government. That stuff costs money.

And I'm still curious exactly how many of these people were mentally ill.

Now, in the case of minors such as the Columbine shooters, it could be argued the the parents could have forced their kids to get help after noticing that they were troubled. However, how do force parents to pay more attention to what their kids are doing? And in the case of the shooters who have been grown-ass men, what the hell was anyone supposed to do that? As a grown man, it's my right to be strange. If someone thinks I'm a potential spree killer, then there ain't $hit they can do about it unless they've actually got some evidence.

I'm just curious what you think is supposed to be done here. Saying that parents need to be more involved in their kids lives is nothing. That's like saying "kids need to not shoot up schools." Telling people what they should and should not do clearly doesn't keep people from doing it anyway. And the whole "someone should have noticed" aspect is a bit troubling. Supposing that someone you know is mentally ill and you happen to notice the warning signs, there's not a hell of a lot you can do about it other than treat him as a pariah. But surely you know that there's already a stigma against mental illness, which is part of the reason why many people don't seek treatment. Do you think that labelling weirdos as likely spree killers is gonna be a stereotype that actually ENCOURAGES them to seek treatment?

The fault can not lie within one cause, there are many.

I blame the shooter. A combination of many elements (From parenting to bullying) may be the catalyst for a person to go on a mass shooting though...

While many different things could lead up to such a act, the ones pulling the trigger are the ones with the majority of fault since they chose to actually do it.

@Fightingfan: Modern society is too soft on everyone, not too tough on males.

Do you know what I blame school shootings on? School administrations and parents. If someone is getting bullied, and there is evidence of it, a kid shouldn't get in trouble for punching a dumbass bully in the face, it should be encouraged. And parents need to teach kids to stand up for themselves.

IMO school shootings happen because these kids bottle up their emotions until they literally explode. I had good parents who taught me that violence wasn't the answer to everything, while at the same time letting me know that I shouldn't be afraid to go there if it's needed.

With guns there would be no bullies.

Yes, I'm quite aware that there is a stigma against mental illness, as I've been treated for anxiety much of my adult life. I know that isn't as severe as many other mental illnesses out there, but there is still a stigma associated with it.

You are further proving my point about education by using the word "weirdos" to make your point. Diagnosing people with mental disorders and getting them the proper help has nothing to do with the label "weirdo". Your use of that word makes you part of the problem. It has nothing to do with identifying future murderers or gunmen. It's about helping people who need help, to prevent any possibility of them hurting themselves or anyone else.

This isn't treating the symptom, it's treating the cause, which is a better way to try and stem the tide of these serial shootings.

the person that pulls the trigger is ultimately the one who is most responsible but, sure, there are always contributing factors like bullies, parenting, culture, laws, schools or whatever. it's hard for most of the stuff that we do to not be influenced by some outside force.

that's not to say that i think we should all just go "well, sh*t. sometimes bad stuff just happens." or "it's just a bad apple" and brush the issue aside. really, the only way we can put a dent in school shootings is to alter the contributing factors. it's just that it still doesn't take the blame away from the majority of the shooters (yes, i'm sure there are a few exceptions).

You can't help people who won't accept help, and people are already wary about getting help because they think society is gonna treat them $hit. What you're proposing is just gonna make matters worse.

Let's suppose you're the weird guy at work or school. You know you're that guy and everyone thinks you're strange, but hell...at least they aren't AFRAID of you. Now imagine that there's a national public awareness campaign focused on recognizing the warning signs of mental illness in the people around you, and now all of your peers are suddenly armchair psychiatrists who have decided that you're mentally ill and still don't have the power to get you treatment. Now in your eyes you've become DANGEROUS. You're no longer allowed to be simply strange or eccentric, you're mentally ill and a threat to yourself and others. Absent any way to help you (because remember, you're a grown man who is free to decide that he doesn't need help), they're gonna shun you. What you're suggesting is just gonna marginalize mentally ill people even more, and make them LESS likely to seek help.

There is no single one person to blame. You can blame the parents, the school counselors and society itself. Thing is, madness only comes after several elements in someone's life fail to come.

just to point out, if they didn't have the guns, there wouldn't have been so many deaths.

I don't know about the SWAG YOLO generation, but growing up and simply observing the treatment of children I'll have to disagree - especially in the black community.

Luckily the school I attended was run by military officers so their discretion on a lot of thing was strict, but at the same time lenient and by the books (just not entirely).

For example,

My friends thought it would be funny to sign me up for MTV-made, and told MTV I wanted to pursue my dreams of becoming a ballerina. Well, turned out I won, but obviously it was complete bullshit and I didn't want the world thinking I wanted to be a ballerina. I took a photo of my friend via google and while in photoshop class I made a gif of him crying while enduring a spanking from Brock Lesna. Well, my teacher knew I was obviously joking, and I showed the individual the photo but she took it upon herself to write me up for bullying. My deans laughed because why would someone 5,8 bully someone 6,7 @300lbs+

Luckily they knew it wasn't a case of real bullying and I simply got detention for day. State run school in itself needs to be entirely revamped from the ground up.

To put it plainly the shooter. Sure the bullies are dicks, but they haven't tried to kill anybody, and sure you can blame the parents, but it's not parents fault that they don't know they can't watch their kids every second of every day, and it would have been the kids choice not to tell them. I really don't think the government has anything to do with it. Schools have so much on their hands, it would be extremely difficult to fix something such as this, and last but not least I do not see it as the tools fault, the inanimate object is the least at fault it was used by the person, and that person knew what it would do, or else they wouldn't have thought about using one in the first place.

In my eyes, sure things may cause some irrational people to do things, but in the end it is the persons fault, there are extremely few circumstances where I would blame something/someone else in such cases, and so far none of the school shootings(which by the way have been going on for about a century, it really isn't new, or much more of a frequent occurrence, like the media would have you believe) that I have read about fit into that category.

@MakeMeaSammitch:

I'm not completely sure about that. You know it is easy enough to make a bomb, and thanks to the internet all that information is ready at hand. If these kids really wanted to kill a lot of people they would probably make a bomb, and in the end a lot more people would have gotten killed.

Don't blame guns and take them away from people because of retards who do this crap.

I blame the Catholics.

I was thinking about that too. Bombs do take a degree of intelligence most people don't have as well as take quite a few materials that are difficult to obtain without having the NSA watching u. One think I do know is that 1/2 of bomb making terrorists kill themselves in the process of bomb making, so if all those people used bombs instead of guns, isn't it safe to say some wouldn't be able to get materials and about half that did would have killed themselves before the rampage?

communism is to blame

All blame goes to society, its everyone's fault, lol ..

I blame parents for not locking up their guns.

Kids are predictably unpredictable.

At the end of the day, I blame the shooter but there are obviously other contributing factors and that right there is a big one.

MK Ultra!

"For every complex problem there's an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

H.L. Menken

Seriously, there's blame to be shared evenly in these situations. A lot of the blame goes to the adults on both sides of the equation. Parents for not knowing/dealing with their kids being bullies/bullied and school administration for the same.

In my country school shootings dont happen. There is still mental illness. Still bullying. There are good schools and terrible schools. Good parents and bad parents. Poor area's and affluent areas. The fact is you can use any socio economic reason to make excuses for these shootings but it just doesnt happen any where near as often in countries with gun control.

As always stupid people are going to do stupid things, sometimes people will get hurt at the hands of others, but the frequency of these shootings is shocking.

@always_explicit: Unfortunately it's become an untenable position in the United States...there are simply too many guns in the populous to make any meaningful dent in their availability. Gun rights advocates like to claim that there's no reason to restrict law-abiding citizens the right to own firearms, but like to ignore the fact that many law abiding citizens snap and become criminals.

A week or two ago there was a shooting in a movie theater in Florida over someone's cell phone use. The shooter was an ex-cop. Prior to snapping and shooting two people in a movie theater, I'm sure that ex-cop was, until then, an otherwise law-abiding citizen.

Would it have helped to have other people in the theater carrying guns? I don't believe so, because more than 2 people would have ended up being shot that day.

Parenting, Love the crap out of your kids and they are way less likely to hurt anyone.

I share your sentiments exactly. I have had the gun control argument many a time with Americans before and usually the final defence is usually that its " a right " and as you said...they feel their rights would be restricted based on the negative actions of others. I just do not see how a modern civilised society can justify such acceptance of these horrific crimes. It worries me that guns are so entrenched in American culture that they are now associated with freedom and not seen objectively for what they are, lethal weapons.

Its a shame that the only defence against the fear of guns for a lot of people....is to buy a gun. I imagine it could be quite a harmful cycle for those involved.