Can the US get any shittier?

[Audley Strange]

The simpler solution is to allow children to have guns and arm every adult with a shotgun, a desert eagle and one of those vests with grenades and a katana (just in case). That way if anyone is shot by a child we don't need to try them as adults.

[mistermack]

Call 'em what you will, I'd shoot the little cocksuckers out of hand.

I'd be reluctant to shoot a cocksucker.

Seems a waste of a valuable asset.

[pErvinalia]

Agreed. Just shoot them.

Hello Seth.

[Audley Strange]

Call 'em what you will, I'd shoot the little cocksuckers out of hand.

I'd be reluctant to shoot a cocksucker.

Seems a waste of a valuable asset.

Are you perhaps suggesting we give em to the Catholic church as punishment? Or perhaps making them some kind of community service rent boy?

CRRAAZY!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Agreed. Just shoot them.

Hello Seth.

The differences between me and Seeth are I don't spray-and-pray, and I've actually killed people, so I know the freight that comes with that.

[Warren Dew]

Sorry to lump you in, but those voices from your countrymen are louder than yours.

I never assume the loudest people from a particular country are the most representative.

Unfortunately they tend to be the most influential.

[Warren Dew]

The legal system ALREADY recognises that 12 year olds are not responsible adults.

The system's expecting it may be part of the problem.

Perhaps expecting juveniles to be more irresponsible is part of why their recidivism rate is so much higher than the adult recidivism rate. For example, in Virginia, the juvenile 1 year recidivism rate is higher than the adult 3 year recidivism rate:

http://vaperforms.virginia.gov/indicato ... divism.php

That would, if anything, argue for harsher, rather than more lenient, sentencing of juveniles than of adults, because more crimes are prevented when you incarcerate juveniles.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Sorry to lump you in, but those voices from your countrymen are louder than yours.

I never assume the loudest people from a particular country are the most representative.

Unfortunately they tend to be the most influential.

Or simply the ones people use to make sweeping generalizations.

[mistermack]

The legal system ALREADY recognises that 12 year olds are not responsible adults.

The system's expecting it may be part of the problem.

Perhaps expecting juveniles to be more irresponsible is part of why their recidivism rate is so much higher than the adult recidivism rate. For example, in Virginia, the juvenile 1 year recidivism rate is higher than the adult 3 year recidivism rate:

http://vaperforms.virginia.gov/indicato ... divism.php

That would, if anything, argue for harsher, rather than more lenient, sentencing of juveniles than of adults, because more crimes are prevented when you incarcerate juveniles.

Yes but that argument is self-defeating. Juveniles who get a long sentence become adults pretty quickly.

I'm not particularly soft on sentencing. I just think that this case is ludicrous. It's so wrong, it's moronic.
I watched an FBI files program the other day, about an adult hillbilly in Louisiana, who went on the run, after killing his wife and her best friend.

He had killed before. He did 8 years for murder 2, he shot an unarmed man with a rifle. The guy was being held down on the ground by his friend. 8 years, for a deliberate killing.

This is a 12 year old kid, who was given a gun by an older kid, who was talked into it by the 15 year old, who pulled the trigger with his eyes shut, AFTER the 15 year old had shot the victim.
He wasn't the instigator, and he was pressured into it by peer pressure from an older kid.
You can't treat that, the same way that you treat an adult who knowingly and deliberately blows a man away.

Anway, it's the peoples' own fault for making guns so easy to get. Have guns lying around everywhere, and then blame 12yos for picking them up and using them. I blame the US people.

If you leave a gun lying around, and a child shoots someone with it, it's your fault.
Well, that's what the US is doing.

[laklak]

We're just weeding out the stupid ones.

Hey, somebody has to do it.

[Jason]

thread TL;DR.. but iirc, the whole idea behind trying youths as adults for things like murder was instituted because the criminal elements were getting kids (under 18) to do their dirty work since they wouldn't get a serious sentence and they wouldn't have a criminal record.

[JimC]

The legal system ALREADY recognises that 12 year olds are not responsible adults.

The system's expecting it may be part of the problem.

Perhaps expecting juveniles to be more irresponsible is part of why their recidivism rate is so much higher than the adult recidivism rate. For example, in Virginia, the juvenile 1 year recidivism rate is higher than the adult 3 year recidivism rate:

http://vaperforms.virginia.gov/indicato ... divism.php

That would, if anything, argue for harsher, rather than more lenient, sentencing of juveniles than of adults, because more crimes are prevented when you incarcerate juveniles.

Or better still, punishing parents for the appalling, neglectful parenting that is usually at the root of crime by children...

[Warren Dew]

The legal system ALREADY recognises that 12 year olds are not responsible adults.

The system's expecting it may be part of the problem.

Perhaps expecting juveniles to be more irresponsible is part of why their recidivism rate is so much higher than the adult recidivism rate. For example, in Virginia, the juvenile 1 year recidivism rate is higher than the adult 3 year recidivism rate:

http://vaperforms.virginia.gov/indicato ... divism.php

That would, if anything, argue for harsher, rather than more lenient, sentencing of juveniles than of adults, because more crimes are prevented when you incarcerate juveniles.

Or better still, punishing parents for the appalling, neglectful parenting that is usually at the root of crime by children...

You'd have to do both, really, to prevent criminal recidivism. And to prevent "recidivism" by the parents, you'd have to punish them in a way that prevented them from having further children.

[Seabass]

Or better still, punishing parents for the appalling, neglectful parenting that is usually at the root of crime by children...

I agree that bad parenting is usually at the root of child crime, but to punish one person for another's crime would be downright crazy...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I agree that bad parenting is usually at the root of child crime, but to punish one person for another's crime would be downright crazy...

*cough* Original Sin *cough*