> The kid should be given very stern discussion on firearms and how not to use them, but yes, the school needs to address root cause.
I agree. When I was reading this story I thought to myself “what this kid has done is perfectly normal. Maybe not quite appropriate, but normal.”
Wind the clock forward ten years, and move this kid from Ontario to Philadelphia, and from the classroom to a back alley.
Under those cicumstances, if he were being “bullied” or assaulted and he pulled a gun, it would be called “self-defense” and, depending on context, he may even be justified in using it.
He is getting the wrong message by being punished for defending himself. And his bullies are, too: I bet they get off scott-free.
(They’ll grow up to be tomorrow’s CEOs. I am constantly amazed by the number of sociopaths I meet in business... well, maybe I’m not so amazed. This is where they begin, as classroom bullies.)
Wow.
After my last post, I had gone into the other room and was thinking about just this, laughing a dark laugh in retrospect at some of the truly sick things that I've endured from bosses or have seen in others.
I'm not anti-business, but the commonly held idea of the businessman as the paragon of virtue and the epitome of American ideals is often pretty far off the mark...and I'm not surprised that all of these factors might lead to workplace violence being more common.
In those inner cities, even pulling a gun or a gunlike replica on a mugger would be considered “1rst degree aggravated assault”. Our system is broken because of these liberals and it’s time for some real change.