“If you didn’t act/ look like X, then maybe people wouldn’t bully you.”
Stop. If you try to act ‘normal’ then bullies will still search for the smallest, most irrelevant aspect about you and use it against you. I was mocked about having a thin goddamn bellybutton in the changing room, nothing I did incited that behaviour towards me. It was never about how I acted or what clothes I wore, it was about the power they had over me, it was about the mob mentality they had. This idea that bullying is a teaching tactic to help the victim mature, to push them away from some kind of cringe culture, is fucking ridiculous. Stop excusing bullying behaviour and blaming it on the victim. No one ever asks to be teased and isolated, so why do we assume the victim was asking for it? Maybe you just don’t want to address the issue because you’re part of the problem.
Stuff like this is why I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to expand civilian firearm or weapon ownership to the schools would look like.
I suspect that this would be the most effective way to stop bullies from attacking people. People often fear consequences, but only when they’re capable of imagining them. “If I keep this behaviour up for a few decades, then I might have trouble keeping a job, or I might get a bad reputation” is just too abstract and forwart-thinking an idea for many bullies to have. It’s also too far in the future for most teenage brains to really conceptualize in any real way, just due to developmental reasons.
There would probably be people who use the firearms specifically as a tool to attack or intimidate others, but the beauty of firearms is that all it takes is one person with a firearm to end a problem like someone who keeps trying to start fights and attacking others. Sure, a bully could theoretically kill a few of their bullying targets, but all it takes is one person recognizing who the problem is in this situation to put a stop to it.
This idea feels like an old one. I’m sure there’s some sort of battle royale style movie or comic set in a high school that tries it out.