‘Where Have We Gone Wrong’: Sheriff On 14-Year-Old Girl, 12-Year-Old Boy Shooting At Deputies

lizkat

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‘Where Have We Gone Wrong’

Republicans: "yeah, but really what can we do?"

:brickwall:


You're asking Republicans in Congress to actually value the life of a child after it exits the womb?

Leaving aside the by now practically insoluble problems of how many ill-gotten and ill-secured guns are out there in the USA waiting to be taken up by a kid out of curiosity or simple rage:

Fund mental healthcare access. Fund child care. Fund school counselors. Fund better oversight of group homes and social service caseworkers.​

Sounds expensive though, eh?

Almost like what it could cost to build more copies of a ship the Navy didn't even ask for?

What does "defense of a nation" translate to in the minds of Republican members of Congress, anyway? Not better mental health care access everywhere. Not universal child care access. The GOP will say --and has said-- it's all down to parenting, and then they say that things would be better if women stayed home to raise children.

Of course if a woman receives any state benefits, then she may be required to work for them (and may have benefits reduced for each dollar of job income!) and in the event of complaints about the illogic of that, then the GOP says well if you can't afford to look after your kids from home properly in the first place then you shouldn't have got yourself pregnant to begin with.​

It's no wonder that party has finally landed in a death spiral if you ask me. But in the meanwhile, behold the suffering of the families without the means to make a better life, much less time and the energy to hold to account the politicians who are supposed to look out for the nation's interests and instead just let money define those interests.

Who know why those two barely teenaged kids were in public care rather than in their own families. Their lives did not turn tragic with that incident, that's for sure. They already had a leg up on that outcome. Charging them as adults for adult crimes will not fix anything either.

That deputy sheriff who asked "where did we go wrong?" Voting for Republicans to run state legislatures and sit in Congress and obstruct the common good seems like a big part of the problem.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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I'd like to know the backstory of how these 2 kids came into this world in the first place. I'm willing to bet this tragedy (or whatever we should call it) started well before they were born, possibly across multiple generations.

Stop making more people would be the solution to so many problems.
 

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Something I noticed was that at some point during this whole situation the girl made a reference to what I think is some sort of video game...... I really can't help but wonder how much those games, especially the violent ones, or the many movies which seem to feature a lot of shooting at each other, blowing up cars and other vehicles or buildings, and using weapons rather than words to express discontent have had an unfortunate influence on the minds of young people who have not yet developed maturity......
 
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Perhaps start with not making guns so readily available?
I made a post about this reddit that got downvoted to oblivion. As I mentioned elsewhere, the south is a major supplier of illegal guns as ~60% of gun theft happens there. If a 12 and a 14 year old kid breaks into your house and have enough time to find your AK and shotgun, it means you are not storing it safely.

These gun owners should be fined like crazy....This is the situation where the negligent gun owner exposes the cops to absolutely unnecessary danger. If you leave your weapons around but cops get on the scene quickly there is a very good chance they will now face heavily armed burglars with serious risk of harm to all. Unacceptable.

BTW, I was called an "antifirearm fundie" (fundamentalist) who never learned to think for himself. Others told me I have no idea what I'm talking about. Yet I was the only person who established and corroborated his opinion based on data. Sometimes I feel that we are hopeless. Ironically, I've lived in America's murder capitals and never been robbed, assaulted, burglarized and I managed to achieve this without owning a weapon.
 

lizkat

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Something I noticed was that at some point during this whole situation the girl made a reference to what I think is some sort of video game...... I really can't help but wonder how much those games, especially the violent ones, or the many movies which seem to feature a lot of shooting at each other, blowing up cars and other vehicles or buildings, and using weapons rather than words to express discontent have had an unfortunate influence on the minds of young people who have not yet developed maturity......

Yeah the naysayers will never convince me that the graphic immediacy of video doesn't have adverse effects upon juveniles when they are exposed or engaged in it repetitively, such as in viewing violent TV shows or participating in first person shooter scenarios in video games.

There is a completely different process there compared to reading, in the mind of a child. The brain wires in half-baked shortcuts to adult understandings that take much longer when the process involves reading and then imagining --extrapolating from usually limited youthful experience-- what is meant by some action sequence in a novel or even a comic book.

Reading or seeing drawings of "Bang! Bang!" can't compare to the thrill of pulling a trigger and seeing the other guy bite the dust, right? But the idea of consequence in video games or TV shows is a pale one. The main consequence is disappointment at "game over!" or "end of episode!"

The idea of judging when violence might be necessary is nowhere. The whole point of first person shooter games is to commit violence until the game is over. The whole point of prime time crime shows on TV is the thrill of being a voyeur of new twists on age old behaviors of people run amok behind their feelings --no judgment involved-- and committing violent acts.

In real life for a kid, when is the game over? When the other guy falls down or when he lands in the slam charged with adult crimes as a child? Kids 16 or younger are sometimes charged as adults. A few states now have no age limit below which a minor cannot be charged as an adult for a serious crime. Yet we know the human brain does not achieve full maturity regarding capability for judgment until around age 25.

We're in an extended season of entertaining ourselves to death via putting our own adult interests ahead of responsibilities -- societal ones-- to the next generations. Certainly it's true that kids are jaded about violence

It's a libertarian thing to argue that there's no such thing as society. In a way, people in the USA at least seem to have been making that into a self-fulfilling prophesy. The rest of us may gawk at the results but we don't seem to have a handle on how to turn it around. We're not looking very hard at how to want to do that, either. Where's the fun in that?
 

lizkat

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If a 12 and a 14 year old kid breaks into your house and have enough time to find your AK and shotgun, it means you are not storing it safely.u

Yet the NRA has pressed states to pass laws like those which in some states forbid doctors treating gunshot wounds in children even to inquire whether the presenting parent or guardian is familiar with or would like information on safe storage of weapons in the home, etc. Unconscionable. And they fight tooth and nail against any enhanced collection of data on unintentional gunshot injuries. When doctors speak up, the NRA tells them to "stay in their own lane" and leave gun policy to the experts.... although the NRA may be finding that the tide is turning against them on that score as time goes on and the preventable fatalities pile up. It's not an easy fight though.

 
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Something I noticed was that at some point during this whole situation the girl made a reference to what I think is some sort of video game...... I really can't help but wonder how much those games, especially the violent ones, or the many movies which seem to feature a lot of shooting at each other, blowing up cars and other vehicles or buildings, and using weapons rather than words to express discontent have had an unfortunate influence on the minds of young people who have not yet developed maturity......
Yeah the naysayers will never convince me that the graphic immediacy of video doesn't have adverse effects upon juveniles when they are exposed or engaged in it repetitively, such as in viewing violent TV shows or participating in first person shooter scenarios in video games.

There is a completely different process there compared to reading, in the mind of a child. The brain wires in half-baked shortcuts to adult understandings that take much longer when the process involves reading and then imagining --extrapolating from usually limited youthful experience-- what is meant by some action sequence in a novel or even a comic book.

Reading or seeing drawings of "Bang! Bang!" can't compare to the thrill of pulling a trigger and seeing the other guy bite the dust, right? But the idea of consequence in video games or TV shows is a pale one. The main consequence is disappointment at "game over!" or "end of episode!"

The idea of judging when violence might be necessary is nowhere. The whole point of first person shooter games is to commit violence until the game is over. The whole point of prime time crime shows on TV is the thrill of being a voyeur of new twists on age old behaviors of people run amok behind their feelings --no judgment involved-- and committing violent acts.

In real life for a kid, when is the game over? When the other guy falls down or when he lands in the slam charged with adult crimes as a child? Kids 16 or younger are sometimes charged as adults. A few states now have no age limit below which a minor cannot be charged as an adult for a serious crime. Yet we know the human brain does not achieve full maturity regarding capability for judgment until around age 25.

We're in an extended season of entertaining ourselves to death via putting our own adult interests ahead of responsibilities -- societal ones-- to the next generations. Certainly it's true that kids are jaded about violence

It's a libertarian thing to argue that there's no such thing as society. In a way, people in the USA at least seem to have been making that into a self-fulfilling prophesy. The rest of us may gawk at the results but we don't seem to have a handle on how to turn it around. We're not looking very hard at how to want to do that, either. Where's the fun in that?
Although I deeply disagree with blaming video games as a determining factor in this (I think it takes many other factors here, like immature reality-testing, emotional regulation and prior exposure to violence and emotional trauma), I do think the observation that you break in somewhere and you find high powered guns laying around is indeed absolutely resemblant of these Battle Royale style survival FPS games like PUBG. But I'd say the main issue here is with reality.
 
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Yet the NRA has pressed states to pass laws like those which in some states forbid doctors treating gunshot wounds in children even to inquire whether the presenting parent or guardian is familiar with or would like information on safe storage of weapons in the home, etc. Unconscionable. And they fight tooth and nail against any enhanced collection of data on unintentional gunshot injuries. When doctors speak up, the NRA tells them to "stay in their own lane" and leave gun policy to the experts.... although the NRA may be finding that the tide is turning against them on that score as time goes on and the preventable fatalities pile up. It's not an easy fight though.

Good luck to the NRA enforcing this:D Where I trained it was a routine screening question at the pediatrician and the OB/GYN. The NRA stands no chance on this issue, unless they'll start treating GSW:D Gun violence is a public health issue, and the NRA plays the role of the tobacco lobby 40 years ago.
 

lizkat

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Not sure these kids can distinguish reality from reality TV though. That's the whole thing. They don't understand potential consequences of their behavior. Now it's with guns. Back when I was a kid it was throwing rocks or such like.

My youngest bro and some pals around same age, subteens, sneaked down into the park where a railroad line ran out from some factory. They liked to throw rocks at the sides of the cars when a train passed through there. One day the bro heaved a rock at the caboose and a window was open and luck of the draw, the rock sailed through and hit the brakeman in the jaw. Of course the guy's mates jumped off the slowly moving train and gave chase to the kids who naturally ran straight for their homes.​
The bro ended up in juvie court and my dad about fell out when the judge --after a lecture and decision to leave it up to my father how to impress against future such behavior on the part of the bro-- said "I hope you understand how lucky you are I'm not sending you to reform school, young man" but the bro bolding piped up "Well I don't see how it's great luck when I got caught."​
See he still didn't get it. To him it had all just been a game and the fact that the brakeman was actually injured by his action only meant to the bro that a feature of that particular game was kinda like a board game where you pick up a card after landing on some spot and the card instead of saying you win a hundred bucks says Go Directly To Jail Do Not Pass Go... so he stepped through the ensuing motions with about that much attention to real life consequence, figuring he'd learned that the dice just don't always roll your way.​
And that was way before today's video games when the thrill of wielding life and death power over a virtual opponent in the game is at stake. I don't think all kids react the same way to these games. But I think the ones who are vulnerable to ending up unable to control their behavior and so let their feelings make the calls are ill suited to sitting in front of a screen where they get to kill whatever stands in their way. Add access to real guns and stand back... meanwhile they're most often short of adult help to cope with their real feelings of isolation, rage, exclusion, etc. And people around them are still too often unwilling to speak out or try to arrange an intervention.​
How many times do we hear of kids who were mass shooters being described by people who knew them as loners or even that they had talked of shooting a place up? There's still this stupid idea that telling some adult about forerunning incidents is "snitching"... even after all these times where it's pretty clear that someone could and should have blown a loud whistle before tragedy played out yet again. I keep hoping that prevention efforts and education will help more school kids decide they've had enough of these largely preventable incidents, and there are times that it's not "snitching" to speak out, it's potentially lifesaving.
As for the idiots who don't lock up their guns... "thoughts and prayers" are what they offer up when some other idiot has not locked up his gun; no thought to "that could have been my gun got swiped"?
 
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Not sure these kids can distinguish reality from reality TV though. That's the whole thing. They don't understand potential consequences of their behavior. Now it's with guns. Back when I was a kid it was throwing rocks or such like.

My youngest bro and some pals around same age, subteens, sneaked down into the park where a railroad line ran out from some factory. They liked to throw rocks at the sides of the cars when a train passed through there. One day the bro heaved a rock at the caboose and a window was open and luck of the draw, the rock sailed through and hit the brakeman in the jaw. Of course the guy's mates jumped off the slowly moving train and gave chase to the kids who naturally ran straight for their homes.​
The bro ended up in juvie court and my dad about fell out when the judge --after a lecture and decision to leave it up to my father how to impress against future such behavior on the part of the bro-- said "I hope you understand how lucky you are I'm not sending you to reform school, young man" but the bro bolding piped up "Well I don't see how it's great luck when I got caught."​
See he still didn't get it. To him it had all just been a game and the fact that the brakeman was actually injured by his action only meant to the bro that a feature of that particular game was kinda like a board game where you pick up a card after landing on some spot and the card instead of saying you win a hundred bucks says Go Directly To Jail Do Not Pass Go... so he stepped through the ensuing motions with about that much attention to real life consequence, figuring he'd learned that the dice just don't always roll your way.​
And that was way before today's video games when the thrill of wielding life and death power over a virtual opponent in the game is at stake. I don't think all kids react the same way to these games. But I think the ones who are vulnerable to ending up unable to control their behavior and so let their feelings make the calls are ill suited to sitting in front of a screen where they get to kill whatever stands in their way. Add access to real guns and stand back... meanwhile they're most often short of adult help to cope with their real feelings of isolation, rage, exclusion, etc. And people around them are still too often unwilling to speak out or try to arrange an intervention.​
How many times do we hear of kids who were mass shooters being described by people who knew them as loners or even that they had talked of shooting a place up? There's still this stupid idea that telling some adult about forerunning incidents is "snitching"... even after all these times where it's pretty clear that someone could and should have blown a loud whistle before tragedy played out yet again. I keep hoping that prevention efforts and education will help more school kids decide they've had enough of these largely preventable incidents, and there are times that it's not "snitching" to speak out, it's potentially lifesaving.
As for the idiots who don't lock up their guns... "thoughts and prayers" are what they offer up when some other idiot has not locked up his gun; no thought to "that could have been my gun got swiped"?
And did you brother become a felon later on?
 

lizkat

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And did you brother become a felon later on?

Nah, he went into the military at age 19 during Vietnam and claimed it kept him from ending up in the slam, actually.

He volunteered into the AF to avoid likely getting drafted into the jungle as an infantryman with a bad draft number in the lottery. Trained up as airframe mechanic... and ended up loading bombs on planes in a base in Thailand for his tour overseas. Some of the planes didn't come back. The bombings that were unannounced by Nixon and the loss of some friends in his work groups seemed to fuck him up pretty good. He struggled to ditch drug and alcohol addictions and eventually took his own life when he was in his early 50s.

I chalked up a lot of his emotional turmoil not just to the war but also to his being the youngest kid and having become an afterthought to my dad and step-mom after their respective divorces, their marriage and the related blending of our families. He was at a pretty vulnerable age, 7 or 8. Our mother died of cancer not long after the divorce, so he was returned from her parents' home to life with the still seemingly honeymooning lovebirds... and the older kids were already well off to college. So he, a slightly older bro and a couple step bros in their early teens were basically like excess baggage to the two adults charged with their upbringing. It was hard for us older kids to watch from a distance and surely harder to live through for them. At the time they sometimes seemed to have a lot of fun. Under the veneer of all that though was palpable loneliness that sometimes shone through in letters we exchanged. That particular bro always signed off with ".. but everything's ok here."

Everything was surreal there, as we all later on used to reveal and chew over together.

We have all eight of us laughed sometimes about how close we thought we all were and yet in some respects we were all like strangers spending time in the same hotel for awhile now and then. It's great that later on we did all become a lot closer. No one can take that away from any of us, nor the individual memories we all have of particular other times earlier with each other while still kids.

But to say it was ok then when it wasn't? That was how he coped with the occasional horror shows as the honeymooners' marriage went sour over time. Kids do what they have to do to stay on the planet, to extent they can manage it, including splitting off reality entirely and making up their own realities a day at a time. It can be pretty hard to get through that wall later on... from either side of it!

Scenarios like that are not uncommon, and don't have an inevitably bad outcome, but it's easy enough to see how things can go south and stay there for some of us. It's probably true that joining the AF helped my bro later on manage to stay on the planet and a free man as long as he did. He learned some transferable skills, experienced some of the upside of an orderly life, had military service and gained skills that underwrote his job searches pretty well later on, and made him a nominally attractive mate (twice), although his marriages didn't work out, which certainly did not surprise me and may not have surprised him either. He claimed to be at fault in the failure of both, and both times for being more of a loner than his other half.

Somewhere he left his ability to engage fully with people half-formed, back when he was that neglected kid. Anyway he was here with us "as long as he could be" -- as a friend of mine once helpfully put it when we were talking about the futility of dissecting the "reasons" for any suicide. When it all got to be too much, he made that call for himself and there would have been no deterring him. And yes it was a suicide via handgun.

I have tried to let all the "if only" thoughts go and just hang onto the fine parts, of which there are so many left to my memory (and little details of my house, which he helped renovate).

But it's not lost on me that give or take a few turns of fate, these two kids in Florida who may well be charged with the crimes of adults could have been my youngest brother. He just had enough of a decent run of luck for long enough to let him find a better path than this girl and boy have landed for themselves.
 
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