I was mercilessly bullied in 2nd and 3rd grade. My tormentors would tease me, ambush me and manipulate things to get me in trouble. I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t violent.

I dreaded going to lunch, then school in general. At one point I didn’t want to leave my house.

You know what stopped it? Mr. Alexander, a NYC schools science teacher who let me eat lunch in his room, saved me the Tuesday Science NY Times section and gave me science teacher manuals with experiments to do. He was a wounded Korean War vet, I believe a master sergeant who presented a very stern appearance. I’d do random errands and do science stuff and eventually helped with a few things in class. He took the time as an adult to help me understand that I was something, was a mentor and worthy of friends. Looking back, he changed the course of my life. One of the only regrets that I have in life is the I was never able to find him and thank him, as he’s almost certainly passed by now.

Every kid needs a Mr. Alexander. Someone who gives a shit and takes a moment to do something. It makes me angry that these shooters are often kids struggling with emotional problems, and instead finding someone to help, end up on online forums grooming them to be bigots or monsters.

I studied to be a teacher. Every teacher knows that the kids we help will usually not reach out to us once they're adults, and that's a part of the job we're fine with.

Mr. Alexander knew he changed your life, and expected nothing in return. Teaching was his reward.

When I got bullied in junior high I immediately went to the vice principal. That was my understanding of what you were supposed to do. And she set up a meeting with me and the bully, and the bullying stopped after that. (Though I remember when I walked into the office the bully looked at me and realized what the meeting was about and he said, “oh give me a break.” He has definitely expected us to settle it ourselves.)

Yeah. You can teach kids that bullying is bad, but if there’s nobody to actually enforce anything and show that there are consequences for bullying, kids quickly learn that there’s really no reason not to mess with people. Bullying is often an easy way for kids to be funny and move up the social ladder, if just a little bit. Unfortunately, the “meme” that teachers only step in when the victim fights back is very true. I’ve witnessed it myself (thankfully I wasn’t a victim) and everyone I know did as well. Bullying victims are punished by every level of society—it’s not hard to imagine that some of them lash out and want revenge.

That’s not to justify shootings at all. But people who suffer years of abuse, especially during childhood, can’t imagine a better life because they’ve never experienced one. An irrational act of terrorism to us is a rational act of balancing the scales to them.

Yup this is a lot of the problem, we stopped being able to discipline kids and they can be really nasty when left unchecked.

Denver Public Schools will discipline kids, just not for bullying. Apparently the victims are supposed to deal with it, which I think is logically inconsistent. If the victim could deal with it, they would. Victim is still getting bullied, therefore they can't do it.

I guess we've lost our sense of individual justice. Standing up for ourselves, making what's right on our mind even if it means consequences.

My personal experience was that some teachers (Kirksville Jr High "Coach" Keith Jerome was one) actually let some bullying go on. Coach Jerome let some kids beat other kids that he didn't like. That would have been around 1974, so maybe in your Golden Age of individual justice and standing up for ourselves.

In general, I think that teachers do use bullies to extract revenge on students they wouldn't otherwise be able to punish. Same as we as a society let cops do extra-judicial killings and such.