Also, one of my nieces is nine years old. Her parents are huge gun nuts, hunters, etc, and they have a very keen sense of safety. So their girl is being very strictly taught how to handle guns and all that

But she doesn't really understand them, I would say. She knows that they can be "bad", and is probably scared of simply pointing one at somebody, but I can guarantee that she has next to no concept of death or prison or suffering or even things like "people who hurt other people". She understands guns about as much as any nine year old could, but even if she were to shoot somebody, I wouldn't give her credit for understanding the implications. She wouldn't shoot somebody, however, because she has been taught that the last thing she should ever do is shoot somebody, and that sticks regardless of why. As spoon pointed out, the kid in the article could very easily just be a product of not having been taught shit, and taking things out in a rather natural way. It's just that this time it ended up like this


For this kid, prison isn't a solution, but neither is letting him go on the way his parents are doing it. It's a rock and hard place thing. The solution is for attention and things like psychiatric care and actual good parenting, education, etc. But the problem is that we don't much have those so in a way the option kinda does come into the sort of dichotomy that Lukie was thinking of where the two options are fuck him in the ass by turning him into a criminal or fuck others in the ass by letting him continue down the road that his circumstances will have