I don't usually look to Twitter for ethical instruction. But this, from The Rude Pundit, brought me up short.
What the kid did at Oxford High School is horrific. He should be punished. He should not be charged as an adult.
His parents, though, should be imprisoned in a hole under the jail.
Every once in a while, I see just how much liberalism has changed. It used to not even be a question on the left that it’s wrong to charge kids as adults and to do so is just part of this country’s wrongheaded approach to “justice.” But, from the responses, I guess no more.
He's right (the RP's Twitter pic is of a "he"). This particular crime feels so egregious, it was easy for me to forget that I've campaigned against the death penalty and excessive sentences for people who were under 18 when they were guilty of crimes. We know teenage brains have not yet developed all the connections fully formed in adult brains. (Some parental brains may be just as disconnected, but what to do with those people is different problem.) What the kid did is bad enough. We don't raise the level of civilization by pretending this was an adult shooter.
One of the tweet comments captures where I sit on this:
My head agrees with you. My gut does not.
Here's the shooter's mug shot:
• • •
And while we are at it, here are the names of the victims who died:
Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17
More teens.
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