At Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minnesota, sophomore John McLaughlin brought a handgun to school and shot two of his fellow students, killing one and critically wounding another. According to some stories, McLaughlin was motivated at least in part by the constant torment he received from other students about his acne.

In New York City, Harvey Milk High School expanded from being a program for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning youth to being a full-fledged school in its own right. According to the website for the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which operates the Harvey Milk High School in collaboration with the New York City Department of Education, "For many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth, the experience is fraught with anxiety, fear and violence. Often ridiculed, verbally abused, and physically assaulted in their schools, these youth may be faced with a difficult decision: safety or education."

In each case, you have students who are not being treated with the kind of common courtesy and decency that every student deserves. However, teasing and bullying are nothing new, and I don't see anything in either of these cases that actually addresses the problem.

For the student who is the victim of teasing, the butt of jokes made at his or her expense, going to school can be a miserable experience. John McLaughlin's answer was to fight back with a gun. In New York, their answer is to create a kind of cloistered environment where the outside ills can be kept away. But whatever happened to helping students find the kind of strength it takes to stand in the face of the taunts? Ask any business owner whether or not the world is filled with only the most courteous words and deeds, and you know what the answer is going to be.

That doesn't mean that the kids doing the taunting should get away with it. No student should feel free to make fun of somebody else for any reason. However, each of us has either been on the receiving end of this kind of teasing or has seen somebody else who was. There are always going to be students who feel like they have the right to belittle others. While we try to teach and correct them, we also need to be sure that the targets of the teasing are able to stand in spite of it instead of being defeated by it.

If we move beyond teasing to actual threats and violence, what does it say about our public schools when the only way to protect a segment of the student population is to remove them from the situation? Are the bullies going to stop being bullies because one set of victims isn't readily available? Unlike teasing, we do have a right expect our children to be kept safe from violence, and the members of the LGBTQ community are hardly the only ones who are at risk. Will they then find new schools to provide safety for each group until the only students left are the bullies? The only lesson learned by anybody with this approach is that bullies win. If they don't want somebody around, bully them. Harass them, threaten them, and if that doesn't work, then beat them up. The victims will be moved for safety's sake, and the bullies get what they wanted.

If someone is going to be able to face adversarial situations as an adult, then they have to learn to face them as they grow up. If you teach them how to handle teen-age teasing and taunting, they will be equipped to face the adult version. If you want to protect them, then either change the bullies' behavior or remove THEM from the situation.