Anti-bullying video may have played a role in fatal Nevada school shooting

[Blue_Tires]

A student at the Nevada middle school where a 7th grader allegedly went on a shooting spree on Monday said that she remembered the suspect as friendly, and said he might have gotten the idea from an anti-bullying video.

Police say the 12-year-old student, who has not been identified, brought a 9mm Ruger handgun to school in Monday and used it to kill a math teacher and wound two classmates before he fatally shot himself in the head. While investigators worked on Tuesday to trace the origin of the gun, the boy was thought to have brought it from home, and there was the "potential" that his parents could face charges, police said.

Sparks Middle School eighth-grader Amaya Newton remembered the suspected shooter as a nice kid who got pushed around by some of his schoolmates, according to local NBC News affiliate KRNV. She remembers other students "tripping him in the hallways" and "bugging him for money," Newton told the station.

Newton also recalled an anti-bullying video that was shown at the school on Oct. 11, just before the students went on their fall break. The video showed a girl bringing a gun onto a school bus to frighten bullies, Newton told KRNV.

"It was an anti-bullying movie, but it could have gotten into his head about the girl scaring the bullies with the gun," Newton said, according to the station. "She brought a gun on the bus to scare them and threatened to kill them."

The video might suggest to students "that maybe it's easier to scare your bullies than just to tell a teacher," Newton said. KRNV spoke with another student who described the anti-bullying video in the same way. A spokesperson for the Washoe County School District told the station they were not aware of the particular video but would look into it.

http://www.12newsnow.com/story/23771344/anti-bullying-video-may-have-played-a-role-in-fatal-nevada-school-shooting-student

So far the contents of the video haven't been officially confirmed, but if true; holy damn....

[Lex]

1. Yeah because he couldn't have thought of bringing a gun

to school withOUT the anti-bullying video. I don't buy it.

Sounds like people are trying to blame the anti-bullying efforts for causing this tragic event.

[Tikki]

2. Me either...

Remember, some religious institutions wanted to be exempt from the anti-bullying laws because they
said their freedom of religion would be under attack by not being able to point out (proselytized) to someone, who
didn't believe as they did, that they were going to hell.

Tikki

[denverbill]

3. I'm all for anti-bullying programs, but if true, this particular one needs to be yanked.

If it made an impression on this girl, it probably made an impression on others as well.

[elehhhhna]

6. seems possible

weird content int het video though

[Shrike47]

4. I suspect the video does not suggest scaring bullies with a gun as a good course of action.

It always interests me what people take from an informational presentation versus what the presenter thought was being conveyed. Often wildly different.

[B2G]

7. These videos are produced by adults

Lord only knows how the 12 year old brain might interpret them.

Maybe middle schoolers need to start directing them.

[Demo_Chris]

5. Interesting to note that it was this young girl who came up with that theory...

She is the one who watched the video and concluded that one message was that it might be easier to scare your bullies than to deal with it in other ways.

[mindwalker_i]

8. Or maybe he got the idea from people carrying around semi-automatic weapons

to go grocery shopping - we've seen that kind of recently. There are so many guns in this country, with people carrying them around, or in movies, or on the news, that it's ridiculus to blame a video for it. Maybe the kid heard about Columbine or one of the many other shootings, and got the idea there.

Or maybe he heard of a video game with a gun.

Or maybe his shoe told him to bring a gun.

Or maybe he saw an NRA commercial.

Or maybe he read an NRA website.

Or maybe he heard a congressman talk about guns and how they were a sacrid right bestowed upon us by God.

But don't blame the kids who tripped him or demanded money!

[JI7]

9. but he didn't use it to scare anyone who was about to bully him, he started shooting nad killed a

teacher.

[Posteritatis]

10. Or, y'know, the bullying might have. (nt)

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Anything to not deal with it

yup

[xfundy]

12. NRA, stand your ground, gun goons in public

were more likely to convince the kid to grab the gun he apparently had easy access to. Sure, in video games, it's usually about shooting or blowing something up, but probably not as influential as the nightly news, seeing how adults react to frequent school shootings, seeing the terror shootings inflict in others.

But if all the other kids had had guns, I'm just sure everything would have been fine.