This past Tuesday, in Glendale, Arizona, a 14-year-old student at Independence High School was detained after staff reported he might be allegedly planning a school shooting. What tipped them off? He’d been researching mass shootings, specifically El Paso and Uvalde. You know, the ones with high body counts and lots of press coverage. This is a parade float of red flags.

And the reason for his spiral? A girl said no.

Police say the student had romantic feelings for a classmate, and when she didn’t return them, he got ‘upset.’ Not just pout-in-your-room upset, but full-on “maybe I’ll befriend gang members to get guns” upset.

So let me say it plainly, this sounds like incel behavior.

The Venn diagram between incels and school shooting enthusiasts is damn near a perfect circle. Both groups cling to bitterness, entitlement, and violent fantasies to compensate for social failure. And when that rejection hits, when someone dares to exist with boundaries, they act like the world just beat them up for their lunch money.

And as I tend to ask in these situations, did he become obsessed with school shootings before he was rejected? Because if he was already marinating in Columbine lore and glorifying mass murderers, maybe that’s why she said no. Nobody owes affection to the kid who’s romanticizing human slaughter. And maybe his personality flaws were obvious to everyone but him.

Parents, listen up. Teaching your kids how to handle rejection isn’t optional anymore, it’s life-saving. Because somewhere along the line, we stopped telling boys that “no” is a complete sentence. We stopped telling them that unrequited feelings aren’t a personal attack. And we definitely stopped warning them that choosing violence doesn’t make you powerful, it makes you a coward.

The only reason we’re not mourning bodies in Arizona right now is because someone at that school spoke up. Someone paid attention. Someone was willing to be the “overreactor.” And thank God for them.

Because the next time a rejected kid dives down the rabbit hole of mass shooter forums and manifestos, he might not get stopped in time.

(Source)

• 14-year-old student detained amid potential school shooting threat in Glendale