🚀 go-pugleaf

My heart sinks each time I hear in the news this: yet another shooting, two
are killed and 13 wounded, and yet again the yellow media pretends not to
know why it happened.  I quote a typical passage from a newspaper:

"Santana High School did everything right: anonymous sign-in sheets for
students to report threats, SWAT training for the principal, program to help
youngsters to get along, including one called "Names can really hurt us".  A
sheriff s deputy was assigned part-time to the school.  Seven full-time
campus supervisors roamed the grounds.  Extra phones, radio and speakers
were installed to spread word of trouble quickly across the 1,900-student
campus.  Somehow, it wasn't enough."

Yellow media take people for stupid: we know from other reports that Andy
Williams was bullied on a daily basis, was called "dork", "freak", "geek",
"nerd", his shoes were taken off his feet, etc.  There were 7 (seven!)
supervisors "roaming the grounds", how on earth could they not notice a boy,
without shoes?  What is the point to have those supervisors, if they do not
see and do not stop bullying?  Santana school did nothing right: what is the
point to SWAT train the principal, what is the point to install phones and
radios?  All they had to do was to stop abuse of Andy Williams, and then
they would not need anything else.

School officials claim that Andy never complained to them.  I do not buy
this: he even told a number of people of his intentions to bring a gun and
to shoot his abusers, clearly, he tried less radical means earlier; it is
March now, and school abuse started in September.

Numerous talk shows have various professionals invited, and all of them are
saying that the matter of school violence is too complicated, each case is
different, there is no quick solution and other general and meaningless
phrases.  We see on TV screens that police investigators "found no motives
for shooting". We see a picture with big WHY written on the wall.  I can
tell you why: IT IS THE ABUSE, STUPID!!!  Stop the abuse, and there will be
no shootings anywhere.

I also read in newspapers that Andy Williams did his shooting to get his "15
minutes of fame". Nothing could be more stupid than this: he did not look
very happy about all the publicity around him.  The yellow media wrote the
same thing about me, that I shot 4 people "to attract attention" to my feud
with the university officials.  Noone in his right mind would shoot anyone
just to attract attention.  Andy Williams is not insane, and neither was I.
What he felt was extreme pain and utter desperation, I know, I was there.

There is though a big difference in our cases: I did not plan to kill
anyone, and I was lucky that not a single innocent person was hurt in my
case, but I think, I can explain why Andy Williams shot passersby, some of
them he probably did not know.  In his head, they were as guilty as direct
abusers, because they saw him being abused, and probably laughed at him
instead of telling his abusers to stop.  It is as simple as that everybody
understands that no abuser can exist unless he sees an audience which
explicitly or implicitly approves his actions, and Andy understood it as
well.  So, if you see someone being abused, try to stop it or tell someone
and demand it to stop, because when the abused person goes berserk, it is
you who might get killed.

I think, I can also explain, why some of the children, involved in school
shootings, killed one or both parents first. Parents are there to protect
their children, and if they not only refuse to protect, but also humiliate
their children and laugh at them, when their children tell them that someone
is bullying them, this creates extreme hatred towards parents. In eyes of
the children, such parents are traitors, and traitors in every society are
hated more than the enemy: they are usually hanged or shot, while the enemy
is taken as a prisoner and kept alive. So, if this is the case, do not be
surprised, when you hear that one or both parents were killed first.

There is in Canadian jurisprudence the defense of battered woman syndrome.
It originates from the case of a woman in Western Canada, who was severely
abused by her husband for a long time.  One day, he threatened to kill her.
She took a rifle and shot him dead.  At the time of shooting, he was leaving
the room, and had no weapon with him.  She was acquitted on the basis of
battered woman syndrome which states that a woman, subjected to a long and
severe abuse, feels that she, in order to protect her life, has no
alternative but to kill her abuser. I accept this, and even if it was not
so, I mean, even if this battered woman syndrome was a fantasy created by
psychiatrists, a woman killing an abusive husband should be acquitted for a
very simple reason: to send a message to all abusers - start behaving or
risk of being killed.  I guarantee that this would be the best way to stop
significant part of family violence.

The same should be applied to Andy Williams: if we accept the battered woman
syndrome, why can not we accept a battered child syndrome?  If you want to
stop shootings at schools, you should stop bullying, and the best way to do
so, is to send a clear message to the bullies: stop bullying or risk of
being killed.  I guarantee this would cool them off.  If Andy Williams had
the money of O.J. Simpson, his lawyers most certainly would revoke the
battered child syndrome defense, but since he does not, I am pretty sure,
his lawyers would not defend him at all.

I have seen on TV funeral of one of the children shot at Santana school, and
one of his friends was reading from a prepared sheet of paper: "Somewhere,
down the road, we shall have all the answers ..." Children do not speak like
that; some grown-ups have prepared this speech for him, taking into
consideration that the whole thing was to be bradcasted to the nation.
Hello, WAKE UP, we have all the answers, many years ago.

 V.I. Fabrikant