I am filled with such grief.  Today we had another school shooting…by another bullied boy who believed had no other option.  What will it take before adults actually make bullying enough of a priority to make it stop?  This is not something kids ever recover from: even assuming they don’t strike out at themselves (as suicides) or out at others (as school shooters), the effects of bullying have been clearly shown to stay with them their entire lives.

The fact that bullying in our schools still exists is horrible; the fact that people still try to deny it causes school violence is a travesty.   When a kid shoots up his school, it is not because he’s a psychopath, it’s because he’s been systematically broken down and tormented for years.  If this happened to an adult, we’d call it torture, and the police would be called.  When it happens to our children, we call it ‘part of childhood’ and say they need to ‘toughen up’.

Sometimes the only way a kid can figure how to be tough enough, is to carry a gun into school.

School shooters are not psychopaths, are not villains or bad guys.

They are victims.

And they break my heart.