LG, you spoke earlier about todays society.I think there are two kinds of people. Those that cross the line and show no remorse and those that try to live within the laws of our society. When I watched juvenile deliquents/young adults years ago, one night a kid struck another kid in the head while he was sleeping and did it because he didn't like him and he had no remorse. A 14 year old locked up there had stabbed and killed another girl as she lay in the bathtub pregnant by the other girls boyfriend.Sweet girl but just a horrible crime. This society a lot of people don't see at all hidden from the world. My sister works at a mental health center and oftentimes there is some horrific crime committed whereby a child has to go through a evaluation to see if they are mentally stable. A kid 15 yer old kid ,a while back, shot his school bus driver at the bus stop because she took away his skoal. Wasn't mentally ill just mean as hell. As for myself, I try not to block myself in at intersections while stopped and basically look over my shoulder when out. Just what I have been around dictates my behavior I suppose. Thankfully nothing bad has happened to my family and myself but I do feel bad for those that misfortunes happen to. I'm only hoping change happens and it starts at home.
fantilidie, that's a good post about a crappy subject.
I had a case (yes, believe it or not I do work occassionally) involving a kid who with his buddies liked to break into cars and steal whatever. Usually just spare change, CD's, cigarettes, junk like that. But every now and again they'd come across a gun.
Well, this one weekend there's a party and these kids go out and break into some cars and in one of them they find a gun. The kid, Teddy, takes the gun to school the next Monday and rumor is he is going to sell it to another kid who doesn't like some nerdy guy.
By the way, these are all white middle class suburban kids, so forget whatever stereotype you might want to put on the situation.
A note gets passed around in first period class about the possibility of this gun bein on campus. very nonchalant conversation about it. The nerdy kid finds out about it and reports it to a teacher, who gets the note and gives it to a principal, who passes it on to a deputy assigned to the school for day-to-day security.
The deputy interviews a boy that he thinks is named in the note, but who of course denies everything. Meanwhile, his student aide sees the note on his desk and runs out to tell Teddy that the adults know. So he goes and hides the gun.
School lets out and Teddy and his sister and friends pile into his Toyota 4runner and as he drives out of the school parking lot and Teddy shows the gun to his best friend in the back seat. The gun goes off, the bullet goes through the front seat and into Teddy's heart. He falls out of the car, dead.
Parents sue the school board the Sheriff (result was I got the Sheriff dismissed and school paid a small settlement a couiple of years later).
During discovery, we obtained a slew of notes that these kids had sent back and forth over the year, a group of about 15 teenagers. I'm no prude, but I was shocked by the sex and violence discussed in these notes. Teenage girls describing what they were doing with their friends at these parties. You'd absolutely be stunned by it. And again, these are just average kids, not what you'd expect at all.
Point is, these kids are coming from what appear to be stable suburban two parent homes. And they are doing all this stuff and guns are just not a big deal to them at all. You can only imagine how completely unimpressed by guns and violence kids who come from less fortunate circumstances would be.
