Did anti-bullying film inspire shooter?

[Chris James]

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/23/21097431-anti-bullying-video-may-have-played-a-role-in-fatal-nevada-school-shooting-student?lite

A horrific thing to imagine. Could a film about bullying inspire a 13 year old boy to bring a gun to school and shoot both a teacher and himself?

The film "Bully" was released this past year and videos of it have been shown to children in schools across the land. This should be a positive thing, but perhaps not in this case. Read below to see what this boy may have seen in the film:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/04/as-bully-opens-bullies-bullied-and-bystanders-weigh-in.html

I cannot imagine a film with such information would be shown without teachers and counselors explaining what is good and bad about what is shown in various scenes. A kid who confronts a bully with a gun in their hand has become the very thing they hate.

Violence is not the answer to bullying. Administrators and teachers need to be held accountable if they see a bully in action and fail to report it. Kids have cell phones with cameras and a teacher who lies about never seeing such things needs to be fired, period. Bullies need to be expelled or given the choice of facing a judge for criminal assault prosecution. Tough love, hell yeah.

[The Pecman]

Horrible story. The saddest thing of all to me was an interview I saw with one of the bullied kids friends, who had been shot during the melee. He was bewildered that what he thought was his friend would do something like this, and swore up and down that the kid had not been bullied, and if the boy had, he would've absolutely defended him and fought to stop the bullies.

As comedian Chris Rock said a decade ago after the Columbine High School Massacre: "people want to blame society for this, or the media. Whatever happened to, 'these kids were just F'in' crazy?'"

He's got a point.

[EleCivil]

I remember when there was a national campaign to get this movie a PG-13 rating so that it could be shown in schools. If you look back, you'll probably find some AD forum posts about the issue.

Now it sounds like they're ready to rally the troops to have it banned from schools.

A recent study showed that schools with anti-bullying programs show a sharp increase in the rates of bullying, as the bullies learn new ways to do it, and learn how to get away with it by looking for loopholes in the anti-bullying rules.

I don't know, man. I don't show movies in class. I'm too busy teaching.

One thing I find interesting, though - this scene that they say "inspired" the shooter, in which a bullied kid brings a gun on the school bus...the kid in the movie doesn't shoot anyone. And she's telling her story from the mental hospital where she's confined, having been charged with 40+ counts of kidnapping. She and her mother are crying, talking about what a terrible decision it was, and how it only made her life worse.

Not exactly the kind of thing to inspire copycats.

[Cole Parker]

Except kids have short attention spans. I can well imagine the kid focusing on the fact the girl had a gun and brought in on the bus and ignoring all the rest.

C

[colinian]

The original objective of Bully was to show it to kids in the school auditorium then they'd go back to their classes and there'd be a discussion with their teachers so it would be a learning activity. I can see how showing it to kids without the teaching/learning part could give some of them the idea that carrying a gun to protect themselves is being recommended.

Colin