Ray B
AH legend
Several occupations, particularly law enforcement include training on recognizing ascending levels of violent behavior. the levels of confrontation start out as harsh glances, go through physical movements such as enlarging frontal size. When the bluffing techniques fail to yield an answer to dominate/submissive the next step is physical altercation: fists, grabbing hair, kicking. generally the participant become exhausted at this level and either a winner is determined or it is a draw with both parties agreeing to a temporary cessation of hostilities. However prior to becoming exhausted the parties may up the level by introducing weapons- baseball bats or hammers for entry level on to knives and firearms for final levels of confrontation.
One characteristic I recall from the training was for the officer to recognize what levels of confrontation would be available and effective to the participants. The bigger a combatant was the more tools were effective and conversely the smaller the person, the fewer options were viable. As a bartender/law enforcement officer i had opportunity to observe several such confrontations. My conclusion was this: if the participants were fairly evenly matched and they had viable options for each level of violence, the fight would generally involve a lot of staring-down the opponent and if it got to physical contact it was pretty much limited to fists and rolling around on the floor. Damage cuts, contusions and a broken chair here and there.
the more dangerous situations occurred when the participants were unequal or one or both had an experience of the mid-levels of violence as ineffective. this generally involved women and men of small stature. The situation would progress through initial contact, visual glares, even some harsh words and name calling. Making oneself look big as possible and other bluffing behavior was next. But when the woman or small man try this it evokes laughter and ridicule from the adversary and any crowd. So they avoid this step. they also know that they will meet with failure if they don't have some advantage weapon of some sort).
While equally sized men will most often work through the increasing steps, small men and women have been trained that when a confrontation starts, wjhen the preliminaries of glares and derogatory remarks have been spent, the jump is not to the next step, but a bypass of all those steps that they have learned were ineffective, jumping all the way to weapon warfare. When smoking was allowed in taverns the most common weapon utilized by the smaller combatants was the glass ash trays- particularly if the disturbance involved un equal combatants. The larger is thinking the name calling has ended and is puffing himself up to bluff and finds himself being hit upside the head with a two pound glass ashtray.
From what I see in schools is that there is a substantial amount of baselevel confrontation and that the school policy is for zero tolerance- so the animosity builds with various incidents until it builds to an uncontrolable level and the victim of the abuse seeks retribution against his harassers. There are no acceptable mechanisms to address the problem, so the student provides his own, which he knows will not result in him being rebuked and laughed at.
So to school shooting one step would be to introduce a program where intra student issues could be resolved either peacefully or with a level of violence regulated by staff.
One characteristic I recall from the training was for the officer to recognize what levels of confrontation would be available and effective to the participants. The bigger a combatant was the more tools were effective and conversely the smaller the person, the fewer options were viable. As a bartender/law enforcement officer i had opportunity to observe several such confrontations. My conclusion was this: if the participants were fairly evenly matched and they had viable options for each level of violence, the fight would generally involve a lot of staring-down the opponent and if it got to physical contact it was pretty much limited to fists and rolling around on the floor. Damage cuts, contusions and a broken chair here and there.
the more dangerous situations occurred when the participants were unequal or one or both had an experience of the mid-levels of violence as ineffective. this generally involved women and men of small stature. The situation would progress through initial contact, visual glares, even some harsh words and name calling. Making oneself look big as possible and other bluffing behavior was next. But when the woman or small man try this it evokes laughter and ridicule from the adversary and any crowd. So they avoid this step. they also know that they will meet with failure if they don't have some advantage weapon of some sort).
While equally sized men will most often work through the increasing steps, small men and women have been trained that when a confrontation starts, wjhen the preliminaries of glares and derogatory remarks have been spent, the jump is not to the next step, but a bypass of all those steps that they have learned were ineffective, jumping all the way to weapon warfare. When smoking was allowed in taverns the most common weapon utilized by the smaller combatants was the glass ash trays- particularly if the disturbance involved un equal combatants. The larger is thinking the name calling has ended and is puffing himself up to bluff and finds himself being hit upside the head with a two pound glass ashtray.
From what I see in schools is that there is a substantial amount of baselevel confrontation and that the school policy is for zero tolerance- so the animosity builds with various incidents until it builds to an uncontrolable level and the victim of the abuse seeks retribution against his harassers. There are no acceptable mechanisms to address the problem, so the student provides his own, which he knows will not result in him being rebuked and laughed at.
So to school shooting one step would be to introduce a program where intra student issues could be resolved either peacefully or with a level of violence regulated by staff.
