@cactus_jack When I was a kid I was friends with a kid who wasn't liked by most. He did have some friends, but he definitely a social misfit. And it was hard being his friend. He was sometimes whiny, sometimes outright mean and just didn't get how to interact with people well. I was a misfit too and I felt bad for him, so I stayed friends. When we hit 14 and 15, we were drifting away some. I will be totally honest and say I was embarrassed to be seen at school with him. He acted like such an ass. I was trying to move out of the misfit class and be normal. We still hung out at times.
One time I was over at his house, and he pulled out a gun. He said it was his. He was playing with it like it was a freaking toy. He was pointing it at things and pulling the trigger. He pointed it at me and pulled the trigger. I lost it. We had a huge argument. I told him that you never point a gun at someone unless you are willing to kill that person. I tried to talk about gun safety. He blew me off. I stormed out of his house. None of the other kids backed me up. None of them said a damn thing. I told my parents. They shrugged it off and told me to stay away from him. None of the other kids there said anything. A while later, I swung by his house for some reason and his parents were telling him to leave the guns alone. They knew at least some of what he was doing. Did they lock up the guns or make it hard for him? Nope. I think he showed me a different gun that day and I told him I wasn't going to hang out while he did that so we went outside and road our bikes. Did any of the other kids say anything to him? I have no idea.
He shot himself. It's not clear if it was suicide or a stupid accident. Either is possible, he was never a happy person. After being in a coma, he died. After telling my parents and having them not care and seeing his parent do basically nothing, I gave up on telling. I stayed away from his house, because I was raised with gun safety, and the way he played with that gun freaked me out. I carried a whole, hell of a lot of guilt for years. I thought I knew and didn't do anything. I forgot about the fact I did speak up. I felt like I wasn't a good enough friend. I was so ashamed of the fact, I avoided him at school. I'm not proud of that fact now, but I've forgiven myself. I was a kid going through all that crazy hormonal stuff. I felt guilty that I missed his birthday party because I didn't want to his house. I was a freaking kid, trying to survive my own abusive family and succeed at school in spite of my learning disabilities.
It makes me crazy when people try to blame the kids for not being his friend or not doing something. Clearly, some of that comes from my own experience. Some of it comes from years of working with kids. We unfairly label the current generation, just like past generations have done. What we do know about the parkland shooter, is the adults failed. What we don't know is what the kids did do. How many kids tried to befriend him at some point, but found it too uncomfortable. I spent a lot of time befriending the bullied kids when I was young. They tended to be very needy or have some really difficult characteristics. I often found myself quickly overwhelmed and eventually would find a way to back out of the relationship. I was just a kid and couldn't fix them. How many kids, said something to their parents, but their parents not knowing what to do, did nothing? How many kids were worried, but saw the adults doing nothing to fix the situation so thought the situation was unfixable? As far as friends not doing anything, do you really know no one did? At least one did something pretty huge. He asked his mom if his friend (who became the shooter) could come live with them because of the death of his mother and problems where he was currently living.
