Now, that being said, bullying and fighting back have basically *nothing* to do with mass school shootings or murder-suicides.
Most of the kids who commit suicide or who plan to commit mass murder were bullied at school and elsewhere. They also had no adults to turn to or their parents were distant. They then let the resentment build up while they constructed revenge scenarios which they then acted out.
The verbal stuff precedes most violence. This is when it should be stopped.
As a kid who moved around a lot and who was a target the first few days in school, the physical stuff does happen - both the threat of violence and violence itself.
I've also watched kids in daycare settings and in birthday parties or other mass amusements and I see it occur regularly there. These take just a few seconds to occur and are often missed by adults and kids often ignore that it occurred.
Isolate each girl in a given class setting with a trusted adult and she will tell you who the bullies are. The boys will be too ashamed to admit it that they were bullied to most. And the bully will lie and tell you its someone else.
And size is no object. I've seen small boys taunt someone and then haul off and hit them - sometimes the biggest kids. And I've seen girls to this to both sexes. Sometimes its hard to see as it involves sharpened pencils or a hard pinch or rubbing the skin or pulling hair or shutting a door on someone.
When kids move into HS it gets much more violent. Many "jocks" will beat up the other kids. And the school will look the other way.
In my HS my football teammates would laugh about smashing the "geeks" into lockers. When I reminded them that these guys were my friends and that they should lay off it, they did. But the coach heard them too and said nothing.
Again, the popular girls will know who the bullies are. Just ask them to list who bullies whom and how.
