What's with this mobbing thing. Why do the mobbers feel the urge to do this?

Is it to impress girls? I mean, what do they get from it?

I'm certain there are people here on func that have been mobbing their schoolmates or something. I'd like to hear an explanation as to why.

It's really not complicated. If you're feeling unsure (or even bad) about who you are and who you are becoming (as many teenagers do), then creating an artificial "pecking order" where someone (anyone) is beneath you...worse than you...less powerful than you, is an instant "easy" way to make yourself feel better about life...and it doesn't require any actual self-examination or improvement or hard work whatsoever.

As long as there's someone else who's deeper in the shit than you are, than you can say "At least I'm not that poor bastard", and putting them down, directly, yourself, is a way to ensure that they're less than you.

"I have power over this person." boils down to simply "I have power." which == "I feel better."

Things get worse when, as often happens, the guy (or girl) deepest in the shit becomes known as "that person" and becomes the target for pretty much every damaged or hurting person in the vicinity who is unable to find a more functional way of dealing with their distress.

Then that poor, overwhelmed (and often deeply-disturbed and mentally unsound) individual makes another "easy" choice, and decides to take power back in a very direct way.

It's hard to be hurt by someone when they're dead. 

No, I wasn't one of the "powerful" ones growing up, nor one of the "poor bastards".

But I probably leaned toward the latter. 

http://pjw.planetquake.gamespy.com/grafix/lag.jpg 

Completely different:

http://rathergood.com/kitten_war

Assuming you don�t have enough irrelevance in your life. 

nothing would have prevent it to not happen

This idea is a) wrong, and b) it's exactly why nothing changes.

My answers are simple:

a) I'm not wrong as you cannot anticipate everything. It it would be the case, there were no more outlaws as they would have been jailed immediately (except the "minority report"... if you see what I mean :P)

b) On this one, I agree. I will add: nothing will change unfortunately, as point a) is true...



Also, I cannot understand how it is possible for kids to have access to their parents' guns. My father is a hunter and he has two big riffle at home: a 7.64mm (war ammo) and a hunt riffle with double shotgun. The law is quite strict about the guns and riffles: when not used, they need to be placed into a safe. The safe must be closed, with a numeric combination, not shared with everybody. Also, the weapons need to be recorded by the police, and you cannot move with your weapons except if you have your hunting license, and unless a hunt "party" is organized by an official association.

I don't understand why such measure are not taken by all countries... it reduces dramatically all the risks of kid taking their father's gun, going back to school killing people.... Unless if you do not apply the law, it is always possible that such massacre happens...

Also even with a knife you can do a lot of damage, you just have to be more discrete, and target throat: it is even more destructive, and painful... 

The law is the same in Germany (weapons must be locked away). So what use is it?

It's society that's the problem. The schools for example. 

... society is not the problem, neither schools.. . I think it is rather a lack of education from the parents. There are many parents that are resigning from their role, and rely onto school to do thier "job"... but this is not school's role to educate kids in the way parents have to.

Also, if people would respect law, and would lock their weapon in a safe as required, such mess would have never happened.... though... 

You're beating a dead donkey there - saying it s the parents fault is the same as saying that games made them do it, or music, or whatever.

It's too clean cut and simple to point at a single factor as the culprit.

Saying society is to blame is probably the best answer it's possible to have, since it's a sum of many factors, the biggest one being other people.

It's a sliding scale of guilt.

Is the person selling an alcohoic whisky guilty? 

Watch kitten war, damn your hides. 

1) Speaking in terms of technology, guns are pretty old, even the more advanced designs essentially use techniques nearly perfected two hundred odd years ago. They are also easy to make, converting semi-automatics into automatic weapons is also a fairly trivial matter. Any semi-competent kid in shop class can make a multi firing lethal device in the space of an afternoon.

2) U.S. Federal government spends 50 plus billion dollars a year in an attempt to eradicate cocaine and marijuana. At best they sieze a tiny percentage and even the figures they give are exxagerated as the greater sum of siezure is ditch weed. Price for both pretty much remains constant.

3) Given the mere square acreage of an American prison where the government has close to absolute control compared to say a border where the control of any government is laughable, you would assume it would be difficult to obtain weapons. Well, that is not the case.

4) Putting your trust in a legislative body's abilaty to shuffle a few words around on paper to better assure your future is insane.
The people who actually carry out those laws remain the same with the same incentives. I have an uncle who retired from an agency in charge of port inspections of shipping vessels coming into New Orleans. He admitted to me he could be bribed to look the other way for nothing greater than a case of a good quality Mexican beer, and in spite of this, he was one of the most honest of the officials working at the time.

5) Speaking of officials, our cops in the past few decades have morphed into 'roided out freaks of nature, so long as 'isolated incidences' like these occur:

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/03/grand_valley_student_shot_whil.html

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6679976

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/401779_schene28.html

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2009/02/23/johnston_sentencing.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab&cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab

http://www.explorehoward.com/news/15341/home-raid-leads-complaint/

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_144800.asp

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/642875BCA98B721B862574B5000DD0C9?OpenDocument

http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/do_everything_you_can_to_save_my_dog/7584/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003299_2.html

I will be damned before I give up any gun that I own, or keep it in a 'safe'. 

that's a disturbing collection of links. I agree totally about the drugs thing, the prohibition attitude toward whatever it is that drooling protestants don't like is exactly what allows organized crime to thrive in the first place, as there will be an economy for anything that plenty of people are willing to pay for, whether anyone else likes that or not. If part of the economy was legalized, whoever was selling it would be forced to follow the law. If it was illegal to sell leather clothes, or chicken, or... alcohol, say - rival businesses would soon be taking their competition to a whole new level as that whole part of the economy would be outside the law. 

"I will be damned before I give up any gun that I own, or keep it in a 'safe'."

Wow, really? You figure a gun is a good defense against cops? I've heard that best described as committing "suicide by cop". How many bullets do you figure the human body can absorb at once? 

For the record, I agree that cops aren't your friend. They aren't even to be trusted, really. But to think that a gun will keep you safe is pure lunacy. 

You're beating a dead donkey there

It was not my intention :P 

That it's too easy to say THIS is the cause - that's just what the shlock media want to do.

Those are disturbing links, definately. 

OK, to refine my position: I didn't THIS is the cause, but I think it the major one... Overall it is quite complicated to provide a "rational" explanation to "irrational" behaviour ;) 

When I was a kid, my best friend's dad was a cop who got shot (iirc) 10 times at once. He survived somehow. 

Along with the rest of us. There are good cops and bad cops, just like any other sub-category of human beings.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that there are more good cops than good human beings, proportionally, just because the job sort of calls out to those who want to make a difference and help others.

Unfortunately, it also calls out to broken people seeking power. While many of them are culled out through the screening and training process, it obviously doesn't catch all of them.

To paraphrase Willem: For the record, I agree that people aren't your friends. They aren't even to be trusted, really. 

And categories of sub-human beings? (a la here) 

But to think that a gun will keep you safe is pure lunacy.

Far from being 'insane', I'm hyper rational and lack the sort of sentiments that allow the majority of my fellow citizens to turn their backs on this sort of commonly accepted but quite deviant behavior. If you are white, reasonably middle class, keep your head down, say 'yes, sir, no sir' when spoken to than you may even afford that luxury of ignorance without it ever coming back to bite you on the ass.

Cops bleed like any one else, and they are more likely to mind their manners if they can't just assume that you are a chump.

If those stories I linked to were headlined, 'Dead Cop, Suicide By Citizen' instead of 'elderly woman murdered in raid of wrong house', 'bartender beaten to an inch of her life', 'fifteen year old girl beaten in holding cell', 'mayor terrorized, dogs shot in no knock raid' than the cops would be more circumspect instead of pulling stupid shit like this.

Willem, if you think it is so insane, then how about pulling up google and search 'police beating, corruption, questionable shooting', + the metropolitan areas within an hours drive of where you live (I only know Epic is based in Cary, beyond that I'm not google mapping you or anything, so chill), say, Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Charlotte, and the obvious will become apparent - criminal behavior is the norm not the exception with these guys.

Incidentally, the person I know to be the most antagonistic towards cops is a former local judge who dealt with their shit, lying in court, systemic incompetence, botched raids, cover ups of malfasceance, assaults on citizens on a Goddamn daily basis. Naturally, he is a former judge because the local police association worked to get his opponent elected. 

I live in Kyoto, and Bal is right :) 

To paraphrase Willem: For the record, I agree that people aren't your friends. They aren't even to be trusted, really.

That. 

Not really the same thing. We're taught when we're young that the police are there to help us and are on our side, which is untrue. We aren't taught that about everyone on the planet. 

Not yet. It needs to change. Parents shouldn't tell their kids that everybody is their enemy, of course! But kids need to learn again that you can't really expect everybody to be your friend, or get along with everybody. The whole idea of world peace is romantic. The idea that "violence is simply bad" is also romantic (that's what I was taught as a kid, for example, and I was heavily mobbed in school). Again, I'm not advocating violence here, just an open mind. If you're taught how to behave in a crisis and how to possibly defend yourself (most aren't), that would be a start. It would possibly also give kids a better idea that they aren't defenseless victims. And perhaps mobbing wouldn't be so rampant then... someone who has normal self esteem and some knowledge of self defense is very hard to mob, I imagine. And probably less likely to mob others, too.

This world is a place with built-in conflicts. Conflicts aren't going to ever go away.

To a degree, I can understand the typical American sentiment of "I need my gun". But I also think that a gun is too often a bad substitute for self esteem and social skills. Not always, of course, but often. 

Ah, sorry, Willem, I got what you wrote mixed up. I mean that teaching kids to be vigilant should be standard.