Punctuation is no match for Darth Druka!

i agree we do need to fix the enviorment so it doesnt happen more often but he still shouldnt just get away with it. Shite i wake up and feel like litteraly killing people some days but i somehow control the urges.

Humans are a product of their environment.

What good does it do us to punish such a young offender so severely without attempting to change the environment that produced him? Won't the same tragedy simply occur over and over again?

Yes, he must be held responsible. And yes, that probably means significant time institutionalized (preferably aimed at rehabilitation).

The bigger focus, however, should be on why he would do such a thing.

The idea that people just wake up one day and decide to commit a violent crime like this is the deluded fantasy of idiots. You simply can't end crime by focusing solely on punishment.

i agree that we should at least try to rehab the guy but by denying he was incapable of making the concius decision to kill the guy is denial of the truth dranok. He may not be able to think far ahead in how his decision may effect him but there is still a dead man.

Also people arnt good by default they arnt bad by default what morals and what they deal with as they deal with shapes them. This person was not on drugs or had a mental illness that we know of so he should pay the price.

The movie Vacancy is my reason to buy a gun.

Keeping this quote in mind..

That is pretty crazy.. i cant imagine why they would think that they cannot rehabilitate him. I will agree with that quote however, except at that age, behaviors and mannerisms can still be modified with quite a lot of success depending on how ill or abused the kid is. Obviously once they get past a certain point and start to come out into the world on their own thats when things start to solidify. At that point the best one can usually hope for is management through medicating.

I would be very curious as to both why this kid shot the guy, and what led up to such a dramatic event taking place. Young kids can get angry and do things without really thinking about them, grabbing a gun, running out of the house, and shooting someone at random can be pretty easy. Little effort or thought is needed for it.

We however do not know the circumstances behind much, if any of it yet. But usually such things need a provocation. Most kids dont go out and do it just to see what its like. Perhaps gang influence, or a dare from his friends, or even the desire to escape his family life had something to do with it.

Who I was at 13 is nothing like who I am today. I don't think my "self" was cemented until I was 19 or so.

That said, genetic mental conditions aside, I think we should feel great shame any time we produce a kid who we feel cannot be rehabilitated. It's a failure of everything social services is supposed to be.

I refuse to believe that someone that young can't change. It irks the hell out of me that those in power have no desire to try.

I usually take an economist's stance when it comes to someones mentality. I like to believe people start out as rational beings and they act appropriately in regards to their perception of the world and the unique information they're given.

Psychologically however; early ages are when your brain begins to write 'certainties' and while they aren't always set in stone; it often will echo throughout their lives. If you were predisposed to rape and sexual abuse before you knew what sex even was then one would only assume you'd have an unhealthy emotional understanding of the act later on and make choices unique to your experience and what you know to be 'true'. You can't always fix something in regards to mental trauma and the closest some get is just behaver modification and suppression. You don't fix the person, you just fix them enough for the rest of us.

As for this article: It's lacking in any significant details so I think it's a bit premature to pick a side. The Wyandotte County DA has information not in that article.

I'm not saying they should give up on the kid. I'm not saying he can't be rehabilitated. I'm just saying there are lost causes and this is to vague to call.


By age 13 you have built most the foundation of how you act in regards to emotions and you are constructing certainties; however your sense of self is presumed to be fully established as late as age 25.

I believe that all people are "good" by default. Acting otherwise is either a product of environment (which can be fixed), mental illness (which can be controlled via drugs or mental institutions) or conscious decision (which can't be fixed).

A 13-year-old is simply incapable of making this conscious decision.

What exactly do you mean by good chunk? I like Pepperidge Farm too.

Granted 13 is young but you already have a good chunk of who you are worked out by then. Shooting and killing a guy for no reason is pretty messed up. If it had been an abusive father or someone the child didn't like, fine. But this was some random guy on the street.

Sure, maybe he can be rehabilitated but I don't want to live anywhere near him when he is freed.