Posted on - 1 Comment on The Arapahoe High School shooter was either bullied or held a grudge. Which one was it?

The Arapahoe High School shooter was either bullied or held a grudge. Which one was it?

Arapahoe High School ahooting victim Claire Davis
Arapahoe High School ahooting victim Claire Davis

I originally posted about the Arapahoe High School shooting in Centennial, Colorado here. That’s when, back in December of 2013. 18-year-old Karl Pierson stormed the school with a shotgun, shot and killed 17-year-old Clare Davis then turned the gun on himself. At the time of the shooting his motive was said to have been that he held a grudge against his debate team coach and was actively looking for him in order to kill him.

Recently the Arapahoe County Sheriffs Department released their report on the shooting. In the report it says that Pierson hoped the school shooting would start a conversation about bullying because Pierson claimed he was bullied in middle school. Too many people are willing to take that statement at face value. If you do you’re taking the word of a self-admitted psychopath. Let’s not forget that Pierson was said to have had this obsession with the need to always be right. You don’t develop that kind of personality trait overnight. While Pierson may have seen it as bullying it sounds more like that other people thought he was a jerk. Not to mention that I doubt Claire Davis was his bully. She probably didn’t even know him. And once again the conversation does not turns toward bullying. Every article I’ve read from about the report talks about identifying the next shooter before it happens. If anything school shooters just make the bullying problem worse.

Pierson was just another narcissistic, ego-maniacal coward who blamed everyone else for his own failings. To excuse his actions in any way is reprehensible.

Posted on - 2 Comments on The Arapahoe High School shooting

The Arapahoe High School shooting

Arapahoe High School ahooting victim Claire Davis
Arapahoe High School ahooting victim Claire Davis

while I was taking some downtime from the blog another school shooting happened. This was the shooting at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado on December 13th. The media were quick to point out the school’s proximity to Columbine. I believe the actual distance is 8 miles while the media made it out to be like the school was next door to Columbine. While even I’ll admit that suburban Colorado has had an inordinate amount of shootings in some of its schools since Columbine it’s all been coincidence. But I digress.

On the 13th, 18-year-old Karl Pierson stormed the school armed with a shotgun, machete and Molotov cocktails. Reports say that he was looking for his debate team coach Tracy Murphy. He fired 3 rounds from his shotgun, one that struck 17-year-old Clare Davis. Ms. Davis was originally taken to the hospital in critical condition but later succumbed to her wounds 9 days later. After being unable to quickly find Murphy, Pierson took the coward’s way out by shooting himself.

As usual after the shooting a better picture of Pierson’s motive emerged but so did a familiar pattern by the media. Take this article from CNN for example. They were already setting up for the bullying angle.

One neighbor described him as bright but a social misfit whose peers ridiculed him. His mother had transferred him from another high school because of the mockery and altercations, the neighbor said.

Surprisingly however prior to that paragraph they published why Pierson may have been ‘ridiculed’. Pierson is said to have been a self-admitted communist who felt the need to always be on the winning end of an argument. You put those two things together and it’s more than likely that people just thought he was a jerk. That’s not ridicule or bullying if you invite it on yourself.

It’s said that Pierson was looking for revenge against his debate team coach. Could it be that the snowflake finally lost an argument or was told that one of his points was factually incorrect? It seems to me that Pierson was just another self-entitled brat who couldn’t handle his own inadequacies and decided to resort to violence instead. Sadly for his hubris an innocent 17-year-old girl who had nothing to do with the situation is dead. As always these cowards like Pierson only inflict misery on the innocent at the expense of their own failures.