Teen faces expulsion after brining stun-gun to school to fend off bullies Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 . . . 16 NEXT | |
firstly,. American schools ONLY transfer you at predetermined times. At the end of first semester. That is the ONLY time you have to leave. You CANNOT leave mid semester because NO SCHOOL will accept you by law. You will be out of school for MONTHS. By the time American law allows him to leave, he would have been beaten countless times. The main reason why transfers are so hard in the American education system is because school curriculums are all over the place, and constant transfers can screw your education. Especially since school standards differ. Its worst in high schools, where some specialty highschools literally fuck over your chances of transfering after the 2nd year and still being able to graduate. Worst case scenario, he is out of school for 6-12 months due to the time-based American system. | |
It's not a matter of making up my mind. Imagine I take a shotgun shell. I replace the shot with a beanbag. I have to use it for self-defense. Imagine the guy is closer than I expected and the bean-bag just penetrates him. I just handcrafted a round to inflict pain that killed someone. How is that going to look in court. By the way, I defend that pepper-spray could be carried by minors if they have a license. | |
Wot. Facing down bullies never worked for me, they just laughed and literally threw me to the ground. If he's facing bullies I doubt he has many friends, if any. In regards to switching schools, hah, it is an absolute hassle to switch schools. Unless his mother wants to pay out of pocket (Which is 40-60k a year) then he has to get school approval to transfer to any special schools, which can take weeks. I don't think bringing a stun gun was the best way to deal with this, but given the situation, I would never punish him. This all reminds me of a movie trailer I saw, Bully I thnk it was. | |
Indeed, I am in this situation right now, I was hospitalized for depression back in December, which was thankfully at the end of the first semester, and was able to get credit for it. But even then, after having been accepted to a therapeutic school, I am waiting until August to start. To reiterate, I've been out of school since December. I'm a sophomore. (2nd year). | |
Like you tried to solve a situation without killing a person but things still went wrong and you killed him. It's not like you accidently stuck nails under his finger nails or you accidently strapped him to the sharp end of a bamboo shoot. | |
Bringing a weapon to school is obviously a bad idea. Fortunately, there are plenty of other options someone in that position has. Unfortunately none of them will actually work, but, um...don't be gay? Yeah, problem solved, I'll go back to ignoring it now. | |
Call the Police as it's their job? It's also the job of a stun gun. Self defense training? That requires time, effort, and significant portion of money. And the result of using that is far worse than taser burn. Deescelation training? I'd like to see the success rate of that. Walking with friends? There's no gaurantee that he had friends, or was able to be with them all the time. And he'd need to walk with more than 6 people. Standing down bullies? What do you think he was doing? He simply did it with a non-lethal self defense weapon rather than physical force. Switching schools is inane. He should be punished? And what's to say it can't happen again. Assumptions about the father are libellous and simply irrelevant. Personally, I'd say the mother is better than someone who would suggest he fight them (Self defense), or force him to move schools. I dealt with bullies as a kid. Martial arts is not the answer. Neither is trying to talk your way out. If I had a stun gun, would I have used it? Yeah. In fact, if I had any gun, or a knife, I'd have used it. I'd had my self defense training. One of the guys that beat on me? He was in the same fucking class, and had been there far longer. I told him not too, I tried all the little techniques. In the end, I almost kicked him in the face. That got me a days respite. I changed schools. It didn't really help- I've a personality that kids liked to victimise. I've also had a situation where I was attacked by multiple people. If you honestly believe some John Woo rubbish, and think you can defend yourself against 6 people, I'd say you're deluded. The moment I felt the situation, I struck back. I was able to throw one punch which barely grazed one of them, before I was pinned by multiple people. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't bench 4 times my weight now, let alone when I was in high school. Civilian Stun Guns are MADE for incapacitating people in situations EXACTLY like this, and are made to reduce the need to be physcically capable of overwhelming multiple opponents, and unlike a weapon like a knife or a gun, can't kill your aggressor easily, even should they deserve it, and can't do serious harm if turned on you. The real problem is that schools don't treat these things like assault cases. This "Kids will fight/be bullied" attitude, one you share, is POISON. Being assaulted is not acceptable, whether normal or not. You are legally entitled a right to self defense. Why is it that schoolchildren are not? | |
Getting expelled for carrying a weapon to school will also result in him being out of school for months. Surely pulling him out would be preferable to encouraging him to use a potentially lethal weapon on his bullies. | |
The kid was 100% in the right. Fuck anyone who disagrees, you clearly haven't been bullied before. You can't just talk 6 people down, action needs to be taken. | |
And being beaten can result in reconstructive surgery for your face, which is a very time consuming and painful experience (I been through it). It costs 5,000$ just to fix a broken nose, and you expect him to just take it? There is no way "out" other than to have the media, ACLU, and LGBT community come and defend your ass. Secondly, its a CIVILIAN TASER. They are VERY DIFFERENT from what the state uses for its cops. Civilian tasers are much lower in power, and can NEVER kill anyone unless you are fighting on the top of a suspended metal beam overlooking the street. | |
When I was in school, we just carried a pen or had some sharpened car keys. Sure you have to put some effort into it but stabbing is just as good as a stiletto. I agree that he should have a way to defend himself but a stun gun in a place that probably has issues with someone walking around with a cellphone is a little too forward. Good intentions, bad execution. | |
If he calls the police they won't and can't do a damn thing unless they are RIGHT THERE, RIGHT THEN. He could easily be beaten black and blue multiple times over by the time the authorities arrive, at which point the authorities still can't help if the aggressors have already left. The kid can't carry a police officer in his backpack, or hire a bodyguard to follow him around. He can't be expected to talk these bullies down any more than you would expect him to stand up to a grumpy Grizzly bear (Its entirely possible to do either, but only if you know exactly what you're doing, and even then the risk of pissing it/them off even more is quite high), and he can't reasonably avoid the bullies in question. Given the school's reluctance to interfere, a stun gun that is used solely for intimidation is an appropriate response. | |
When I was at secondary school (high school for you guys outside the UK), my friend group was constantly being picked on, I ended up in a fight with one of these guys and nearly broke his nose. When my head-of-year tried to disapline me for it, I calmly explained that my friends had been getting bullied since they came to this school at 11, so I felt my options were rather 'limited'. He accepted the school hadn't been doing enough so I got off 'scot free', if schools don't do enough too curb bullying than children can't be blamed for the ways they choose to protect themselves and parents for helping protect their children. | |
Fuck school. I got forced out of mine and it was probably the best thing that has happened to me. This kid should leave even if they don't kick him out and give them the finger.
More likely they'll talk up their zero tolerance policies for weapons, the "what if everyone brought one" scenario, make it seem like his fault he was getting bullied and expell him anyway. You can already see the start of it in the article where they say they told him to "tone down" his apparel and that they wish he shouldn't have had to. | |
That's really NOT NECESSARY. I am capable of picking up KEY POINTS without the retarded and patronising EMPHASIS. I wasn't aware of the difference because I live in a comparatively civilised country where we have free healthcare and such weapons are illegal. If "civilian tasers" are so weak, wouldn't they be ineffective? If they are effective, why do the police feel the need to use tasers on such high voltage? Also, how did you manage to construe my suggestion that his mother pull him out of school instead of give him a weapon as my expecting him to "just take it"? | |
The police use and require a higher voltage because they generally require the target to be completely incapacitated as soon as possible. Civilian stun guns are built around the principle of shocking the target just enough to give them an opportunity to get the hell out of there. A decent comparison would be comparing the use of a police baton to a swift kick in the nuts. Both can incapacitate an opponent if done properly, but only the former will relatively guarantee that the opponent will stay down for more than a few seconds. | |
The school is powerless to get rid of the kids until there's a near-catastrophic event. Even for a fight, they get 10 days home. You might not realize how incredibly hard it is to get someone expelled these days. School funding is tied to enrollment, so if you expel a kid, you're basically taking money away from the whole school. School boards won't stand for that, so they'll overrule a principal more often than not. But this isn't about parents not getting help through the proper channels. This is about the parents believing it's the school's job to do everything. Now, I believe that in this case there is probably more that could have been done -- provided the kid was reporting the incidents to teachers or administration -- but we're not a law enforcement agency. Why do parents go after the school instead of going after the parents of the bully? Because you're more likely to get money from a school. Schools would love to get the cops involved on this stuff, but any teacher knows they'll be fired the second they do. School boards (elected officials) don't want their employees bringing bad press. "Tell the school to do more" is not the same as "We tried everything." Sorry.
So in this crowd of 6 people, he had a stun gun. What if they'd rushed him? Could he stun all six? Or is it more likely that at least one of the kids would have gotten hold of it, and the situation would have escalated? (I'll give you a hint, it's the second.) He's incredibly lucky they backed down (which only serves to prove that they were not determined to kill the kid). I'm not saying the kid should get bullied. I'm not saying there aren't some things the school could do. I'm saying the parents and kid aren't "trying everything else," and that there is absolutely no excuse for a kid to bring a weapon to school. It's not even about what the kid would/wouldn't do with the weapon. The kid is making that weapon available to anyone in the school that could take it from him. And the kid is creating a climate in which other people will feel they should have a weapon, too. | |
What makes teachers any different? If we're not RIGHT THERE, RIGHT THEN, we're taking the word of one over the word of another. Except we don't have the Law on our side. We aren't allowed to detain, apprehend, threaten force, or do anything of the things that cops can do. We're lucky if we can get a suspension to stick, since school boards are notoriously political creatures always trying to appease the public (which is made up of the parents of bullies, too).
You want us to bite? Give us some teeth. We can't "interfere" unless it's right under our noses. And we're so crazily understaffed that there's always somewhere unattended, even if it's the damn bathroom. You don't give cops water pistols and jump ropes, and then complain when they can't foil an armed robbery. But rant aside (it's not targeted at you, I promise, just a general grievance I have), a child bringing a weapon is never "appropriate." Again I ask -- what are the chances one of those six bullies could have gotten the weapon away from him? Or, seeing that he had a weapon, grabbed a rock or something that could do serious damage? It's far more likely that the very presence of a weapon will escalate a situation. He's far beyond lucky that these turds "scattered." Basically, if these kids were truly a threat worthy of a stun gun, the kid was actually in more danger having brought it. And if they weren't a threat to life or limb, the stun gun was a disproportionate response. Either way, it's a non-solution. I reject the notion that this parent has tried "everything." (At the same time, I'm not saying the school did everything in its power, because I don't know.)
Because schools aren't law enforcement agencies, and teachers aren't cops. It's up to the parents to get the police involved, not the school. Our hands are pretty well tied. | |
Actually, the most likely scenario is exactly what happened. Bullies get off on the idea of having an individual completely at their mercy. Once a target demonstrates an ability to fight back, far more often than not, they are left alone, at least for the time being. Obligatory qualifying statement: Please note that the aforementioned piece of pseudo psychology is linked fairly exclusively to schoolyard bullies and should not be extended to other situations, nor should it be taken as a universal rule within that area either.
I don't blame the school, much less the teachers. The school board can't do a damn thing without getting yelled at by both the government and parents that haven't had kids affected by bullying, and the teachers... lets just say I'm well aware how shorthanded they are. I gripe fairly often about our educational system, but I'm well aware that the shortcomings have far more to do with excessive restrictions and lack of funding/resources rather than incompetence. Regardless, this still leaves us with a serious situation that has no obvious way out. The kid can't directly defend himself, and the kid's parents have no way to defend him, or even make sure the aggressors get punished for the action. In a case like this, assuming we're not missing crucial details, the only options appear to be either to simply let the kid take a beating as often as the bullies can get away with it, or go outside the system to find a better solution. A stun gun might not specifically be the right answer, but I for one will ALWAYS pick the latter category. | |
We'll see. The kid just changed the game. He put weapons on the table, clear as day, and bullies can use them, too. See, next time, they'll bring more people. And, because they know he has a weapon, they're not going to give him warning or mercy. And they'll do it off school grounds, most likely. | |
ITT: a load of people believing every word of the OP. Seriously, when will people learn to not just instantly believe something they read? I'm half tempted to create a fake but realistic story a week or two from now, let it go for a bit and then reveal the truth to all the knee-jerkers. I'm no conspiracy nut or anything of the type, but if the government did wanna cover shit up or make us believe things, it sure would be easy--just run a news story or, better yet, post it in a forum. P.S.: Escapist, I'm adding every brand the captcha gives me to my "never support again" list. | |
Somewhere in there, the mother should be brought up on charges not the least of which should be corruption of a minor in convincing her child it was ok to bring a potentially lethal weapon into a public school with any sort of intention to use it, in defense or otherwise. | |
Jesus christ its a CIVILIAN TASER. How many times must I say that? Its not lethal, its low voltage can NEVER be. The power of a civilian taser hurts, but never kills. | |
The obvious solution to all of this bullying is to loosen gun regulations. People will think twice about picking on someone if they think they're packing heat! Sincerely, the NRA. P.S. Buy more guns. | |
I cannot speak for everyone else here having checked the story before saying anything, but the article partly quoted in the OP is real enough. 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. | |
Yeah, he should've just Shoryuken'd those bitches. 'course, he'd -still- be expelled... | |
That doesn't fix the pain, which is still there for a month and the 8 total months of healing which is JUST for the nose. Another poster already countered your second statement. | |
You can say it as many times as you wish, it still is not the only factor involved. This is taking a taser powered by a 9 volt battery ...into an area where students are far too often pumped up on drugs like ritalin that directly puts strain on the patients heart or various other unforeseeable circumstances that can turn a non lethal weapon into a lethal one. Hence why In my original post I said a "potentially" lethal weapon. But it still does not matter. The mother should be charged with a litany of parental irresponsibility related charges for sending her child to school with a weapon, regardless if it was a lethal one or not because it is still a weapon. | |
I'm with her. If the school won't help, then you have no choice but to take matters in your own hands. That being said, I say this with a straight face that I do not condone violence, but if someone wants to harm you, and if no one is around to help (or help is not given), then you do whatever is necessary to defend yourself. Six on one? Listen... even if you have skills in self-defense, six in one generally will lead you to getting f'ed up. Numbers will take down even the greatest fighter in the world. This is what's frustrating to me: if the kid didn't bring a stun gun (or something to defend himself), and he got jumped by these six kids, and *knock on wood* something bad happened to him, people would be saying, "Oh, maybe if he learned how to defend himself, he would have been fine," or, "Maybe if he took matters in his own hands, he wouldn't be in that position." So, now he takes matters in his own hands, people are saying, "Oh, bringing a stun gun was unnecessary!" Or, "What kind of irresponsible parent gives their child a stun gun?" What I'm seeing is that it's pretty much darned if you do, and darned if you don't. And I'd be darned if I found any fault in this guy doing what he had to do to defend himself. Now to answer OP's question, if I was in this position, I probably won't be using a stun gun, but you are darn skippy I'm going to be using something that will even up the odds. | |
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 :P | |
That's probably not going to convince anyone, lol. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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. | |
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Oh, no! A boy brought a non-lethal self-defense weapon to school and didn't even use it. We should ban everything and put everyone in jail.