There have been many valid points made on this subject. In the big overall picture of a more perfect world, McInerney wouldn’t have been able to get his hands on a gun. Hand-to-hand combat is so much easier to break up when there isn’t a deadly weapon involved. In terms of Sean’s point regarding the teacher should have noticed McInerney being agitated: I know from working with at-risk youth, including emotionally and behaviorally disturbed adolescents, that they can be masters of disguising their emotions, so there may have been no indication whatsoever that McInerney would be pulling a gun.

In regards to the idea that King should have been educated and prepared about the dangers of the “real world”–he may have been told, and still chose to express himself the way he did. You can’t force someone to change their personality. Some personalities are more bold than others.

It’s a very unfortunate situation all around. Clearly, McInerney had his own issues that weren’t being effectively addressed. We don’t know what exactly was going on in the killer’s head. He may have hated King, regardless of what King said or did. If it hadn’t been King, it could’ve been someone else. Children, and that’s what they are, are impulsive. “The temporal lobes of the cortex (of the brain)that play major roles in emotions and language do not develop fully until the high school years and maybe later.

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…it takes at least two decades for the biological processes of brain development to produce a fully functional prefrontal cortex (Weinberger, 2001). Thus, middle- and high-school students still lack the brain development to balance impulse with reason and planning” (Woolfolk, A.(2007). Educational Psychology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon., p.24).

As for the students not turning King in for sexual harassment of McInerney–come on, we all know no one likes a narc, especially at that age.

So, no, blaming the victim doesn’t work, blaming the group home doesn’t stand, nor does blaming the school. My question is why don’t they prosecute the parent/guardian of McInerney along with the boy? He is a minor. His parent/guardian is responsible for him and that person allowed his/her child to obtain a weapon, whether it was unbeknownst or not to the adult,–the guardian is still responsible… These were two boys, not men. Current neurological understanding of the human brain shows that they were both several years away from having fully developed brains, especially their pre-frontal cortex which is responsible for controlling emotion.

What you say Allison reported about tolerance programs sounds like what people say about D.A.R.E. Artificial thought experiments and things may start some interesting discussions, but they don’t affect behavior.

Schools had a lot of trouble dealing with gay bashing before NCLB. They still do. There’s no evidence that the programs designed to prevent school violence or build tolerance actually work. I happen to know that because my daughter worked for the California Education Department for a summer; part of her job was to help schools apply for grants for anti-violence programs and to report on the research (which turned out to be non-existent) on effectiveness.