Teen faces expulsion after brining stun-gun to school to fend off bullies

[Grey Day for Elcia]

As for using the media to run a conspiracy, sure you could do it. Good luck getting both NBC and Fox to run side by side though.

Because news stories are always accurate? Easily half of everything you see on TV is a lie or incorrect. Simple example: those "quotes" you see people give? More often than not the person supposedly giving them never said them and never saw them before print, either. My mum, the manager of a company (obviously going unnamed) is quoted every month in her group's newsletter. She's never said a word of it, lol. The news paper retractions page? Mistakes and flat out lies every week.

Flash the guys up to a cheque and they'll run whatever story you want.

EDIT: sorry for getting off-topic. I'll stop

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Fuck anyone who disagrees.

That's probably not going to convince anyone, lol.

 

[Dirzzit]

The kid brought a weapon to school. The instant someone does that, you absolutely have to expel the kid, no matter what the circumstances were. I'm not sure that there was a good option for the kid if the administration genuinely wasn't doing enough, but worst-case scenario, the stun gun could kill someone, and you only use something like that in a genuinely life-threatening situation, one that I doubt was really ever a possibility. If there was a real threat to the kid's life, he wouldn't have been going to school. At least he didn't actually use it on anyone, so he probably won't end up with a criminal record.

Brought a knife to school once and the principle found it. Guess what happened? Shit All. He said not to do it again, so the kid Has a chance not to be expelled.

 

[itsthesheppy]

It's cute they they allow their school to become a place where people cannot be themselves, safely. Then when that person feels physically threatened, they are arrested and punished for arming themselves with the means to defend themselves. Arrested for, apparently, posing a physical threat to the people... threatening him... physically.

You really have to wonder how some people's brains don't just implode from time to time.

 

[doomspore98]

snip

Oh look, somebody who has clearly never dealt with bullies. A friend of mine stood up to bullies once. When he left the school the next day they were waiting for him in the car park and smashed his face through somebodies wing mirror, breaking his nose, and then proceeded to beat on him for a while. Teachers, rather than helping, confiscated the phones of anybody who tried to call the police so they wouldn't have a scandal. This guy wasn't some "pussy" he was a practiced brawler and one of the strongest people I knew. Bullies don't fight fair. If you try to fight them fairly, you will get hurt or worse.

Holy crap, where are you from? In my school district the teachers aren't total dicks. But this is what I was thinking when I read this thread. Bullies don't fight fair and should be stopped by any means necessary.

 

[MBergman]

What I find the most shocking is the amount of people seeing it as a good response to have sent the kid to another school. So a kid gets bullied by 6 others, and he is the one that should be moved? If anyone should be moved it's the 6 bullies for fucks sake!

Imagine being bullied by a bunch of kids, let's assume it's because he is gay because that has already been made a point. You ask for help from the school and their response would be to transfer you. To me that would feel like the school is saying: "Yeah, the bullies are right! You obviously don't fit in! We're gonna move you!"

It pisses me off that some people actually fucking suggest that.

Now, before you say anything. If the kid is the one to suggest it, fine. But he is the only one with that right!

Fortunately I'm from a country where both stun guns and pepper spray are illegal to use. Somehow kids manage to deal with bullies without that.Plus by finding solutions that don't involve a weapon they don't escalate the matter into a weapons battle that eventually they will lose, they don't break laws, and they actually find ways to stop problems that build their confidence and discourage future bullies by generating respect.

And I did supply a series of answers above to alternatives.

What we seem to have here is a cross dressing boy who wasn't smart enough to talk down agressors, tone down his dress, or simply have friends. He must have demonstrated lack of confidence or they wouldn't have picked on him for any length of time. Through the absense of the father in the story, he was probably without a father and thus didn't know how to handle himself as a man in that situation. So what did he do? Pulled a weapon? A cowardly response that will only make his life worse. He's lucky, for example, that they fled. He pulled a weapon first, at that point they could have taken him out and reasonably claimed self defence.

....Wasn't SMART enough to talk down 6 attackers? Wasn't SMART enough to compromise his way of life because someone bullied him? Wasn't SMART enough to have friends?

Are you fucking retarded for real?

 

[Spitfire]

So it's illegal in the U.S. to bring a non-lethal gun in a school for the purposes of self-defense, but it's not illegal to verbally abuse someone there, threaten, and physically assault them? I mean, as far as I can tell, none of the bullies in question got expelled, and yet, the victim was. How does that work?

 

[KefkaCultist]

The kid was being threatened by 6 people and a 6 on 1 beating is absolutely a life threatening situation. The school wasn't doing anything to protect him for this sort of thing so what else was he supposed to do?
If you have a better solution I'd honestly love to hear it, but I don't see any other options this kid had

You call THE POLICE. It's their job. The school can deal with small stuff, but threatening a physical attack is a crime.

There is also self defense training, deescaelation training, walking with friends, standing down bullies (most will back off if pushed), switching schools, and MANY other solutions.

In addition to the kid being charged in this case, I'm rather disappointed the mother wasn't charged as well. At the very least child services needs to review her custody, she doesn't appear to be a fit parent. I wonder where the dad is in all this, oh wait, I can probably guess.

I dealt with bullies as kids, a stun gun is not the answer. There are plenty of answers, that isn't one of them.

Why not?

This is a civilian short-range non-Taser stun gun. It's basically a powerful portable Van-de-Graf generator, something that we played with one physics class with teacher's consent. The shocks hurt, but are NOWHERE NEAR deadly, unless you have a barely-functioning heart and get hit in the upper-torso all while Lady Luck frowns a frown of death. It's as safe as self-defense measures GET. When you have six people blocking you into a corner and threatening to pummel you into oblivion, it's all well and good to talk semantics, options, and how the school SHOULD be intervening, and how people SHOULDN'T bully others... as you get pummeled into oblivion. Good luck reaching a phone to call police (who won't come and attend a schoolyard standoff anyhow).

And what are the "other answers"? That's a slap in the face to anyone who was unable to stop bullies as children. I faced bullies as well, and I don't know how you did it, but the only thing that permanently stopped a bully before I outgrew them all was when I grabbed a big stick and threatened to bash his head in with it. Don't like that? DEAL WITH IT, IT WORKED BETTER THAN ANY OTHER METHOD. I tried all the others I could think of.

And quite frankly, "threatening to mildly injure" is a much better "solution" than your proposed "switch schools" or "threaten with greater injury" (a common effect of self-defense training), and some of your other ones simply won't work. De-escalation requires the other person to be somewhat reasonable, walking with friends requires friends, evasion requires speed, standing down requires cowardly bullies, NONE OF WHICH I had to work with.

I LAUD this kid for having the balls to make motions of fighting back, as well as having the brains to fire a warning shot first. I laud the mother for actually using the full extent of her power (up to arming her kid with a non-fatal stun-gun) as far as she needed to to make a goddamned difference.

Your post reeks of wishy-washy idealism that simply doesn't stand up in a bad bullying situation.

I was gonna make a post in response to the people saying to take "better" actions, but you've summed up pretty much everything I would say and in a better way, so thank you.

I approve of this kid's actions.

 

[James Crook]

I don't know whether I should call him a jackass or congratulate him on notifying the school administration that it should be doing something about bullies.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

It's all fun and games until someone gets shocked into cardiac arrest.

Back in my day, when we had to deal with bullies, we performed a musical number that showed the bullies why they wrong to do such nasty things. They would then join in with our song, proclaiming their lives changed.

The more you know.

Why am I picturing the John travolta from Greece singing in the film Carrie? It is such a surreal role cross over. Just replace this:

With this:

Around the same time this Happens:

Now add some too cool for school dance and you've got what I'm seeing.

 

[Comando96]

I wouldn't give them a Tazer...

Firstly I would walk into the school with a small "camera" (Mobile Phone) in a pocket in my shirt and go to where these kids surround my child. This would take some pre-planning

With that footage I would force the school into acting. If the school does not act then I threaten the parents to do their job of have their children's faces smeared over the News Networks and the internet... if they don't do anything to improve their kids attitudes then I make good on my promise.

If this continues still then I'd give my child a Tazer and the Media will just love the Drama created.

The Media is sensationalist... if you know how to play the Media then that can easily work in your favour.

"School and Parents failure to confront bullying force parent to give their child a Tazer for protection"
I bet the school board would love all of that damning coverage of their miserable failures when trying to run for re-election.

 

[GistoftheFist]

Has anyone noticed everytime there's a thread like this (victim is confronted by multiple people, uses a weapon to even the odds) people are always against the victim? One kid is chased off a bus and uses a knife, and the thread condemns him. Oklahoma mom shoots guy armed with a hunting knife, thread condemns her. And now this story comes up, same thing. Yes, the six bullies ganging up on one aren't the cowards, nope, it's the victim using a weapon to stave off being beaten into a coma who is the coward. Anyone saying he escalated things by bringing a weapon is stupid. Do you think those six are thinking "he doesn't have a weapon, so let's only beat him down a little less"?

Thread members sure love saying what the victim 'should have' done, even if they've never been in that situation themselves. You always hear in these threads "fight back, kick them in the nuts, man up" These situations aren't like in movies, you won't knock out Biff with one punch. Show me any martial arts that can show you how to survive a six on one attack because I sure as hell would love to learn it. You say he's "asking for it" because of the way he dresses, which is "different" than what is "normal". In my schooldays, the mentally challenged students would get bullied all year long, what were they supposed to do? Not be disabled?

During my middle school years (or "junior high" as it's called here) older students informed us that there's a "tradition" of beating down the younger grades with "paddles" (which were just basically short broom handles). You'd see these douchebags coming out of shop class with them, decorating them however they wanted. Anytime someone was targeted, it was always a mob against one, and always when no teacher was around or looking. I saw people get fucked up and have to wash the blood from their faces in the bathroom sink. And yes, teachers did know about this and informed people over the intercom "anyone caught with these paddles will be suspended". Like they cared. It was easy to just hide them and pretend nothing was happening, anyone who spoke up was labeled "snitch" and treated worse.

Like it or not, authority figures in schools are vastly outnumbered and aren't there to enforce discipline. Not only that, but sometimes you'll get overzealous gym teachers or "old school" types who encourage "hazing" to "toughen up" people. You really are by yourself sometimes, and powerless to have real action taken to keep yourself safe. Put yourself in my situation for a minute: roving mobs of meatheads jumping your grade around the school, you aren't a hugely muscled jock who can defend himself singlehandedly, teachers can't or do little to control the situation, and even if you do successfully run away you have to go back to the same hallways the very next day.

Threadmembers need to really match what's in their head with what goes on in the real world. It's easy to sit here in your computer chair whittling away at every little thing someone does wrong or what they "should have" done. I really am not surprised anytime I hear news stories like this because I can personally identify and know exactly how it feels to be forced into a building full of people who only exist to make life miserable for everyone around them. It's easy to see why these stories come up, when you're backed into a corner and nobody is willing to take real effort to help you, what other choice do you have?

 

[Leadfinger]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say bringing a stun-gun to school was not the best way to handle the situation.

 

[Dags90]

Brought a knife to school once and the principle found it. Guess what happened? Shit All. He said not to do it again, so the kid Has a chance not to be expelled.

My brother did the same thing and was immediately expelled. My mom had to sue to get the school to take him back...

That's sort of why I brought up the earlier point that it's probably best to simply work out an arrangement with to have the schoolboard provide homeschooling. That was my brother's first step, getting homeschooling so he wouldn't fall behind.

 

[Comando96]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say bringing a stun-gun to school was not the best way to handle the situation.

Of course not...

There are easier, much more effective ways of getting the Media's attention to deal with a homophobic school board.

 

[Schadrach]

You know what my solution to being bullied in school was? To get the right rumors started.

It's amazing how easy the most innocuous comments with the right eavesdroppers can turn into being a crazy MFer who will poison your lunch or track down your home and bomb it if you push him too hard...

 

[Something Amyss]

[
I'm forced to ask, given the same situation: would you?

No, but when I fought back without a weapon, I got in trouble anyway.

 

[Schadrach]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say bringing a stun-gun to school was not the best way to handle the situation.

Of course not...

There are easier, much more effective ways of getting the Media's attention to deal with a homophobic school board.

Were they homophobic, or were they just falling back on the horrible, but unfortunately common method of saying "You got bullied for X? Then don't X!"?