As the United States mourns the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and grows increasingly angry at the local police officers who reportedly failed to help the kids inside despite their calls to 911, commentators (many prominent Republicans) have frustrated political opponents by floating solutions to help avoid school shootings in the future, such as homeschooling kids and remodeling schools so that they have one door.
Yesterday, Dilbert creator and TCOT Scott Adams entered the conversation, voicing the idea that these problems could be averted if we allowed "kids to kill their bullies."
If we made it legal for kids to kill their bullies, a lot of problems would go away.
We'd create new problems, sure. But how could those new problems be worse?
This is a thought experiment, not a recommendation.— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 26, 2022
"If we made it legal for kids to kill their bullies, a lot of problems would go away," Adams tweeted. "We'd create new problems, sure. But how could those new problems be worse? This is a thought experiment, not a recommendation."
This "thought experiment" put forward by Adams, who is no stranger to posting some truly wild things to Twitter, was certainly a bold suggestion in the eyes of many. It is unclear how exactly Adams theorized letting kids murder their bullies would prevent a school shooting, but few seemed willing to entertain his "let kids murder each other" solution to the problem of school shootings.
don't thought experiments usually involve actual thoughts
— Miley 🫠 (@MilesKlee) May 26, 2022
even as a thought experiment this is probably the dumbest thing ive ever heard
— transgender marx (@JUNlPER) May 26, 2022
This is the dumbest tweet on the app https://t.co/HWekmjsDCi
— Neo (@NeoWokio) May 27, 2022
Some more charitable folks decided to play out the ramifications of Adams' hot take and quickly concluded that letting kids murder each other would be very bad.
If we let any innocent little kid be able to kill their bully.
That would not only cause a lot of grief and sorrow to the bully’s family, but also the kid would live with the fact they took a life and that guilt would swallow them whole.
That idea is cruel and disgusting. https://t.co/fU7ZNR5QLF— Panda (@Sakuuda) May 27, 2022
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris already demonstrated your "thought experiment" at Columbine High School, Scott. https://t.co/gOboOF0z74
— ⚜️ Joe Shorter 🏉 (@joeshorter) May 27, 2022
As the inevitable dogpile fell on Adams and his controversial tweet, he played it off as though the backlash against him were merely proving his point against bullies.
I tweeted one thought experiment about bullies today and it attracted all the bullies to my feed to bully me while thinking they were the good guys. Self-awareness = zero.
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 26, 2022
Top Comments
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May 28, 2022 at 12:51AM EDT
A Concerned Rifleman
May 27, 2022 at 07:13PM EDT