Courage and Grace Under Pressure

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I'm sorry, but I worked with kids a lot -- we (as a society) give them a free pass far too bloody often. If you kill someone, my sympathy for you ends, regardless of your age. God knows I wanted to kill a few people when I was a teen -- my tormenters were brutal <gas poles> (use your rhyming skills) and they made my life hell, but I still knew enough about right and wrong -- and I believe we ALL know enough about it -- that I didn't kill them or even assault them.

I know that's harsh. But we have to start holding people accountable for their bad decisions rather than make excuses for them.

Lucky for this girl that

A: I'm not in charge

B: She didn't pull the trigger when she did have the chance

and

C: the boy stopped her before she either did shoot someone on purpose or by accident.

Because even with the biggest bleeding heart judges in the world, she would be facing a more severe punishment had she killed someone.

 

Oh, I'm not saying she shouldn't have been held accountable, but I think there are means short of capital punishment to do that, especially when the person in question is 14.

While no amount of abuse from other children can justify shooting them (or threatening to shoot them) there's a chance this girl has mental problems. Oh, and it's also been ruled by the Supreme Court that you cannot put someone to death who was suffering from a mental disability. (This is why you sometimes see people plea insanity - it usually doesn't work - because then the murder they commit would not be considered a capital crime.)

And I'm sure she will still be facing some type of criminal charge for doing what she did. In my state, threatening someone with a firearm (and waving a handgun around certainly qualifies as threatening) is a felony. Specifically, you get charged with assault, whether or not you pull the trigger, and whether or not the gun is even loaded.

 

And she had 22 counts of it, so she is (read: should) probably going to jail for a long time.

 

Wow ... what happened to turning the other cheek, forgiveness, redemption, and all such nice things? That just sounds really ... cold. I find it very hard to advocate death for people I empathise with - you do it so flippantly even while seeming to be able to empathise quite strongly...
Eh - your post makes me uncomfortable in ways I can't quite explain. I find it quite disturbing, even.

I, for one, hope she gets the help she clearly needs. Good on the guy too - someone should give him a medal.

 

Well, I guess there are high schools and high schools. Mind you, some of the high schools here are ....holes par excellence, but most students don't wave guns around. Knives, pepper spray, taser, maybe even a gas gun (afaik all of these have been found on students), yeah, it happens at times.

One more thing makes me doubt your theory: if she had the gun to use on someone, she would have tried to do that. AFAIK, she wanted to stop the bus, or maybe have it take her somewhere. I think the article would mention if she had tried to threaten one person in particular. That's why I said I think she just flipped out for some reason.

Well, execution is imo way too hard for that. Don't get me wrong, if there were people killed I would agree that she has to pay the price. However, there's a long, long way from "not guilty" to "execution". All those different punishments exist for a reason.

 

Something I learnt along time ago, if someone threatens you with a gun, they dont want to kill you, if they did you would already be dead - this guy is lucky she didnt want to kill him.

 

"You don't have to push it through my back to kill me. It's a gun. Bullets come out."