Richard Day's picture

    MORE CHILDISH GUNPLAY

                        

    Baby Face Nelson shot his first victim at age 12.

    Jeff Hall, a white supremacist leader in the Los Angeles area, was shot to death by his 10-year-old son on May 1. In an account of the neo-Nazi's life, the New York Times notes that Hall managed to win custody of the children from his ex-wife.

    http://www.slate.com/id/2293768/

    This is a fascinating story to me. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/02/neo-nazi-leader-jeff-hall-shot_n_856660.html

    There are a number of reports concerning this patricide throughout the web.

    The ten-year-old who shot his fascist father.

    A tragedy of the first order that will no doubt show up on the cinema or at least as a cloaked episode of some crime series.

    The fascist wins custody of his kids. I would give anything to interview the mother. The transcripts of the proceedings would make an interesting read.

    And what do we do about this?

    Should we prosecute the boy as an adult?

    Each year about 200,000 defendants under 18 are sent directly or transferred to the adult system, known as criminal court, according to rough estimates.

    ...In Michigan, a baby-faced sixth grader, Nathaniel Abraham, shot and killed a stranger who was leaving a convenience store. When he was arrested in his classroom, his face was painted for Halloween.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-12-01-tryingkids_N.htm

    Just as an aside I came across this line in the same article:

    Meanwhile, the prosecutor buses in at-risk kids — ages 9 to 11 — so they can talk with a few teen inmates, seeing them in cuffs and chains, cut off from their families.

    This was one 'solution' to these babies who are caught in criminal behavior that does not involve murder I suppose.

    The article lists 2007 legislation (or proposed legislation) in several states and actually reports that some states were sending juveniles to prison as a cost cutting measure.

    Americans love tragedies; they just insist upon happy endings to those tragedies. Ha

    There is no happy ending here.

    I found this introduction to a '98 essay:

    Should child criminals be tried in courts of law as adults? A twelve-year-old Michigan boy, Nathaniel Abraham, will soon become the youngest child ever to be tried as an adult for murder in the United States. Psychiatrists say this short and frail boy functions at the level of a six-year-old, but could receive the same sentence for murder as an adult. Young Nathaniel is not alone. In the last twenty years, more than 150 children have been sentenced to death in the United States. Each year there are over 750,000 delinquency cases that go before judges in the United States. Tens of thousands of these children are tried as adults. (White)

    http://www.come-over.to/fasstar/juvcrime1.htm

    So we are presented with a scenereo of an individual with the mental competency of a six year old being tried as an adult!

    This same essay notes that more and more states had been setting 14 years of age as some sort of cut off date for adult prosecution of juveniles.

    Florida is one of the meanest states sentencing 12 & 13 year-olds to prison for decades at a time.

    http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/aug2001/flor-a03.shtml

    I am not judging here; I mean when you shoot and kill your seventh grade teacher on the last day of school what am I supposed to do with you?

    CNN noted this tragedy last year:

    On a chilly morning in February 2009, state police found 26-year-old Kenzie Houk in her bed with a bullet though her head. She was eight months pregnant.

    The search for her killer ended with the most surprising murder suspect residents of Wampum, Pennsylvania, had ever seen: 11-year-old Jordan Brown, the son of the victim's fiancé.

    He is one of the youngest suspects in the country to be charged with homicide, legal experts say. There are two counts of homicide, one covering the fetus

    http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-10/justice/pennsylvania.young.murder.defendant_1_juvenile-homicide-jordan-s-attorneys?_s=PM:CRIME

    The combinations and permutations of different factors relating to juvenile gun play are being played out every day in this country; this land of the free and home of the free gun play.

    A jury Thursday convicted an Oklahoma City pharmacist of first-degree murder, saying he went too far when he pumped six bullets into a teenager who tried to rob the drug store where he worked, and suggested he spend the rest of his life in prison.

    Jerome Ersland, 59, had been hailed as a hero for protecting two co-workers during the May 19, 2009, robbery attempt at the Reliable Discount Pharmacy in a crime-ridden neighborhood in south Oklahoma City.

    A prosecutor, however, said that after Ersland shot Antwun Parker in the head, knocking the 16-year-old to the ground, Ersland made himself "judge, jury, executioner" by getting a second handgun and shooting the boy five times in the abdomen. A coroner's report said the latter shots killed Parker

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110527/ap_on_re_us/us_pharmacy_shooting

    This story really bothers me. The problem is that I have not read the transcript of this trial. I cannot believe that the defense attorney did not make several mistakes in the presentation of the defense case.

    How competent can you be after some wild drug addicted teenager comes into your shop waving a gun.

    In the old days I stayed at an apartment one block from a liquor store and I swear there was a cop car present every morning investigating the latest mayhem committed at that establishment. So I assume the new focus of crazy felonies has to be the local drug store.

    I can understand a conviction for manslaughter but damn—first degree murder? I don't care if the bastard emptied two clips into felon.

    But like I say, I have not read the transcript.

    The last anecdote I present concerns the duty of the police in facing juvenile gun play!

    A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder after a Chicago police officer fatally shot his 15-year-old friend Wednesday on the South Side.

    Brandon Ross and his friend Tatioun Williams allegedly robbed a man at gunpoint in the 7000 block of South Cregier Avenue Wednesday evening, and were confronted by police officers a short time later, the Chicago Tribune reports.

    When the officers told the teens to stop, Williams, who was holding the gun, allegedly turned in the officer's direction, Fox Chicago reports. Fearing for her life, the officer shot the 15-year-old, killing him.

    "They could have taken him to jail, they could have done anything but taken his life," Williams' mother told the Tribune Thursday.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/27/brandon-ross-charged-with_n_868289.html

    Police are forced to clean up our garbage.

    It is the citizenry that has made the weapons of mass destruction available to our children.

    If my buddies might have had to face machine gun fire in Vietnam, they had to fire back even if the enemy was a 14 year old soldier.

    What is a police officer to do under the same circumstances?

    I have no answers here.

    I was just struck by Doc Cleveland's post on Loughner.

    I know we have lost the gun argument in this country to the NRA, but I still become enraged when I hear some gun toters speak. I caught this interview between Piers Morgan and that damn Nugent:

    MORGAN: You write this down. Eighty people a day die in America from gunshots.
    NUGENT: And 75 of them to 78 of them -- statistics by the Uniform Crime Report by the FBI and the U.N. study on violent crime -- 78 of those 80 are let out of their cages by corrupt judges and prosecutors who know the recidivism is out of control, know that they'll commit the crimes again, and they let them walk through plea bargaining, early release, and programs.
    MORGAN: [unintelligible]
    NUGENT: Kiss my ass. Where you have the most armed citizens in America, you have the lowest violent crime rate. Where you have the worst gun control, you have the highest crime rate.

    At Andrew Breitbart's BigHollywood website AWR Hawkins suggested Nugent stuck to "fact-based arguments,"  but a quick look at the facts show that both Nugent's statements are wrong.

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/201105260028

    Comments

    If we could just figure out a way to get all those gun-toting idiots to turn their guns on each other rather than on us innocent folks.  Maybe we could siddle up to each of them and whisper to them that the NRA is spreading lies about their mother, and we wouldn't take that if we were them ... (P.S. Here's an extra clip for ya... )  On second thought, I guess that would be wrong.  (Sigh) I hate the people who keep shouting about needing more guns and then scream that gun laws wouldn't have stopped people from killing rampages.  Guns do kill people because if you'll notice, mass murder is rarely committed by people armed only with spoons. 


    OK, I grant you that one. But you should check the statistics on knives and forks. They are much sharper.


    I will tell you one thing w....

    In the joint, there are a lot of deaths committed with kitchen tools....hahahah


    Sometimes they do turn their guns on each other:

    Gilbert road-rage killing: No charges in shooting near mall

    .....Bohls said he considered driving away, but he was boxed in by other vehicles.

    Bohls grabbed his .9mm Glock handgun from a center console. As he opened his driver's door, he said he saw Fickes removing a handgun from his waistband......and...Fickes is slow on the draw RIP.


    Nobody was prosecuted?

    What a strange story. You can be sure I bookmarked this strange site!


    What can I say?  I guess I was wrong about kitchen utensils...


    Now where in the hell did you find this? hahha


    The funny part is Smith that when you google the issues involved you usually discover that 30,000 plus folks are dead from gunshots. And 1/3 of the victims committed suicide.

    How many times in life have I thought about 'ending it'? And if there was a 45 in the cupboard....well.

    Teens are killing teens, no doubt about that! Gangland has been here forever.

    But damn, the tragedy is so potent to me.

    This is one of the finest speeches I have ever witnessed at the cinema:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE7mhZgME2k


    Another one of those issues where we, as a society, are just stuck. There are studies that show more guns lead to fewer gun deaths. But what is less well known, there are also studies disputing these results--sometimes on technical grounds, e.g., the regressions weren't done correctly, etc.

    No doubt, an armed individual feels safer when facing another armed individual. But if guns are the only solution to guns, then we'll need more and more guns to defend against...all those guns!

    The whole thing is insane...and of course deadly.

    While it's true that guns don't kill, people kill...it's equally true that guns help people kill. That's why we give them to soldiers.


    Yeah guns help kill people!

    They certainly help our children kill people!


    What can I say. Like father like son.


    Yeah, yeah that was my conclusion!

    The household of hate!


    I saw that white supremacist patricide story a few weeks back (here's a pretty good article on it ... with some firefox layout issues). Crazy story. Apparently the mother was alleged to be abusive. I think they are handling the situation well as far as the system goes. The kid is being charged as a juvenile and they are protecting his privacy. The lawyer is talking about insanity; so I imagine there is some level of trauma we don't know about - may never know.

    I can understand a conviction for manslaughter but damn—first degree murder? I don't care if the bastard emptied two clips into felon.

    Seriously? That's rather disturbing. The unconvicted teenager, who didn't live long enough to be accurately referred to as a felon, was lying on the floor with a bullet wound to his head. If that had been the end of it and the alleged robber ended up dying, the event would have been remarkable only as a data point to support NRA assertions gun owners are able to defend themselves from crime (to stack against data points the other side accumulates to make their case). But the guy went and got a second gun and emptied it into an incapacitated human. That's fucking warped. I say put his ass away.

    The last anecdote you highlight confuses me. Are they charging the 16 year old with murdering his 15 year old friend - actually killed by police bullets? That seems odd. Also odd is that the officer totally fucked up and shot the kid who didn't have a gun. That should scare the living crap out of anyone unfortunate enough to have that officer patrolling their neighborhood. American cities and towns aren't the fucking jungle of Viet Nam. Confirming the target and clearing the shot before pulling the trigger is critical for a law enforcement professional - particularly in a fear situation; skip that part and they aren't putting their lives on the line, they are putting the community in danger. The final oddity is that despite not incapacitating the kid who actually had a gun, the 16 year old does not seem to have taken advantage of the situation to fire any shots. Not exactly an outcome one would imagine from a machine-gun-wielding VC in the event one your buddies had missed and accidentally shot a nearby villager instead.

    I'm not completely sure the point of this post (not a critique, just not sure if I'm going off the rails a bit) ... but damn it highlights that society is ALL fucked up. I'm more convinced than ever that guns really don't seem to be the problem, society is. Hell, you are totally down to defend some guy who would go to the back room, get a second gun and empty a couple of clips into a wounded human just to finish them off - imagine how the wingnuts approach such situations. Add to that the willingness of society to defend cops who taze 90 year old women and 8 year old children ... and the real picture of where we're going wrong starts to come into better focus. In a society that has systemically abandoned respect for life and human dignity while embracing the infallibility of those who wield power with physical force, can we be surprised when our children increasingly reflect what they are being filled with by the world around them?

    And also too ... Ted Nugent is an asshat. Always was, but now that he sees an opportunity to goose his declining career with this gun thing, he's gone super-asshat.


    The druggist.

    That was kind of an aside. I have not read the entire file.

    But the intent involved in first degree murder should involve some sort of planning. I know the law.

    I know that intent can be had in an instant, I disagree with that reading of the law.

    The flush of adreniline can turn us all into beasts.

    That never means absolution.

    That just should go to mitigation; hence manslaughter over first degree murder. Maybe 15 years instead of life.

    But again, I have not read the entire file. Maybe the RX took the stand and began speaking of his rights or some goddamn thing!

    First degree murder is over the top, as far as I am concerned. But there may be variables that I am not aware of.

    Oh and was not Nugent always in decline?

    I swear to this day I have never listened to one of his tunes. What has it been? 40 years?

    He and his NRA repub fascist friends just send me through the roof.

    Maybe it is a combination of tragedy with boisterous self indulgence?

    As far as I am concerned, when you look at the record of child violence with guns from nation to nation there is a reason we are number one!

    But like I say, that war is over. We are a nation of guns, one weapon for just about every single American; man, woman and child!

    Thanks for stopping by.

     


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