Violence is the Answer to Bullying

I have been very sad lately, because Jon Welton committed suicide. I was a pal bearer, and I thought I was alone outside with the other pal bearers. When the hearse door closed on the coffin I lost my shit on a level I never have since I was a young child, and turning around to see dozens of people I didn't realize were there, that awkwardness, did not slow down my involuntary emotional reaction to realizing I would never see this 14 year old saint ever again.

Now since the funeral it has come out that Jon had stood up against various bullies on behalf of other kids, making him a target for some unknown number of other bullies. I was in that situation in the 80's, and when I told my father I was going to use my paper route money to get a flair gun and arm it with a 12 gauge rock salt cartridge, he immediately got me enrolled in martial arts classes, and martial arts has been a huge part of my life ever since.

Sure there was violence, but no one died. Sure I was suspended, sure bullies had to go see the school nurse, but there was no long faces at youth suicide funerals because of bullying. Sure my friends packed improvised weapons like whips made of TV cable, knives, crossbows, maces made from skull shaped stick shifts, and pepper spray, but we rarely had to use them, and never had to do anything but threaten with the weapons to get bullies to physically back down against us. Certainly no one felt it necessary to bring a gun to school and open fire on the general student body.

Now one of my sons who trains in Brazilian Jujitsu has to see a therapist because of depression, and not surprisingly bullying at school is a factor, and he wisely hesitates to use physical violence to defend himself against the physical and non-physical bullying at school. Arming himself at school is completely outside of his thinking on this, which is is a very good thing. So what I have come up with is an appropriate escalation-of-force model for dealing with bullies:

1. EVERY TIME a bullying incident happens, immediately go to the teacher and demand to see the school counselor saying some thing like "I need to see the school counselor because I AM GOING TO HIT (name of bully here.)"
2. If the bulling continues, then EVERY TIME a bullying incident happens, use extremely strong language yell at the teacher "Get me out of this class now or I WILL KILL (name of bully here.)"
3. If the bullying continues, then EVERY TIME a bullying incident happens, take the bully to the ground and hold them there until an adult shows up to break up the confrontation.
4. If the bullying continues, defend yourself with appropriate physical force as if you were not at school.

If the school is doing their job in the slightest, 1 above will do the trick. Even if the school is very negligent towards student safety and 1 above doesn't work, 2 should scare any professionally trained teacher into taking serious action to intervene in the situation. Should the school be a generally inept and dangerous place for children and 2 not work, then phase 3 should draw their attention to the fact that their bullying situation has become a safety hazard for their students. Should 3 fail, I would rather my child be expelled from school than be dead from extreme physical abuse by other students or suicide. In the USA we are allowed to defend ourselves when someone is physically attacking us, though this fact has been very inconvenient for many a school district in the past: