Well these things happen everyday to thousands of kids all across the U.S. Wake up America, this is a real problem, and I fear the consequences that it brings with it are more than we can bear.
Let's examine the school shooters for just a minute. Usually quiet, intoverted, polite people. Usually they feel very helpless, very angry, and give them access to a gun, and it makes them very deadly. I know, I know, we always had guns in homes, and our schools were never target practice for kids, but think about it. These kids have role-models now. Nowadays in their lives, the only role-models they have are people in the media. And who gets more media coverage than even Michael Jordan? That's right, school shooters do. School shooters are people that these kids identify with. Dad doesn't understand them, but they know exactly what it's like to be picked on in school. The one thing that school-shooters do that indicates that they are wrong, cruel, and insane is looked upon as an act of vengeance by the kids that want to be like them. No one would idolize them if they were loud-mouthed, arrogant bullies that shot up their school, but instead it's the shy, polite outcasts that are doing it. The nice boy next door that's just misunderstood. Kids can identify with that more than famous athletes or politicians. And don't they they can't, because they already do.
This all really started with Columbine. The school-shooting powder keg that ignited every school and every home across America. While most of America was shocked that such a thing could ever happen in our schools, a small segment of kids suddenly found a pair of martyrs. The media attention we gave Columbine only fanned the flames of kids whose hearts burned with hate. The attention that the shooters of Columbine and to the bullying that went on there suddenly gave new motivation to a select group of loners and outcasts. They wanted that attention too.
