The Likely Outcome of Fighting Back Against an Armed Assailant

Here's the story of John Klang, a Wisconsin school principal who took a gun away from an armed student. Shot in the process, he died later that day. The student, of course, is not responsible, because he is the victim of something, and the principal, of course, just made things worse by trying to take his gun away.

So that's what awaits you if you resist: probable death, even if you succeed, and slanderous comments about you in defense of your murderer.

Sidebar:
On the other hand, there might be at least some (and maybe more than some) truth to some parts of the killer's story. I went to a fairly small and very tame grade school, ditto high school. I think I graduated just before we really started hearing horror stories about violence in public schools. Nevertheless, I suffered frequent humiliation until I learned to fight. After that, I fought a fair bit, and watched others who didn't endure humiliation, helping them out when I had the physical and psychological resources. There was a small number of predatory students who spent their days terrorizing weaker and meeker kids. It wasn't south central L.A. or anything, but I witnessed some poor kids live hellish lives of repeated humiliation. If one of those kids had brought in a gun and shot one of his tormentors, frankly I wouldn't have thought it that unreasonable. This is not to advocate such action, but just to report my opinoin at the time. (Why anyone would start killing people indiscriminately, though...well, I just can't answer that one.)

Of course, when you did fight back, you got in trouble for it. The bad kids didn't care about that, of course, but the good kids did. Punishing people for defending themselves is, I still think, about the stupidest thing I've ever seen.

The teachers let this go on because, first, they usually didn't see it, and, second, they were kind of afraid of the mean kids, too, even though there was no physical threat to them. I came to think that most of the teachers had been picked on themselves and had never quite gotten over it. Consesquently, they were hesitant to confront the bullies, and, in fact, kind of relieved when the mean kids struck up a kind of alliance--or, at least, cease-fire--with them. It was as if some of the teachers actually enjoyed the fact that the mean kids kind of semi-befriended them. It seemed as if that made them kind of regress, as if the bullies of their own youth had finally stopped terrorizing them. Very speculative, that, but that's the hypothesis that suggested itself to me at the time.

So what's the point? The point is in no way to attempt to justify the unjustifiable, nor to excuse the murderous. It's rather something like this: there are plenty of reasons to stop bullying in schools. Rather far down on the list is this one: some kids will be bullied until they come back and kill. Now, if they only killed the bullies, I have to say I wouldn't be all that concerned about it. But that's not the way it will happen.