[quote]Ambugaton wrote:
[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
As a young guy who has had the personal experience of a friend getting shot I don’t ‘admire’ what this old man did. However, I don’t condemn him either. I understand he was probably scarred and rife with adrenaline, which caused him to react the way he did. But I bet he will regret killing the kid for a long time.
I grew up in a rough neighbourhood and knew some people that made bad decisions. When you’re young (especially 15-16-17) you make mistakes that you look back on and regret. I feel bad that the young man who was killed made a bad decision and had to pay for it with his life. [/quote]
I agree. I think the geriatric was within his rights to use lethal force, but it’s nothing to celebrate. A sixteen year old is a child. A child made the wrong decision and was killed. Unless somebody can prove that a person is incapable of moral change at the age of sixteen then this is a tragedy. [/quote]
It hasn’t been a very long time since I was 16, but I have to say that I’ve changed a lot in the last three years, and most people my age that I know have as well. 3 years ago, I was considerably less mature, more hot-headed, and much less conscious of the consequences of my actions.
This meant that I fought with my parents and didn’t do my homework. I didn’t repeatedly rob old men with a couple of buddies. 16 year olds are NOT children, as someone said earlier. They may not be fully cognitively developed, but they certainly know that it’s wrong to assault and rob anyone (let alone an old man, who they presumably targeted because he was old and therefore likely to be less able to defend himself).
While no, it’s not an event to celebrate, I wouldn’t call it a tragedy by any stretch- it’s just natural selection in action. If you live somewhere that permits concealed carry, you must assume (as another poster said earlier) that someone might be carrying. Did the teens involved consider this? probably not. But they should have, and they paid for their oversight.
I would call this a poor choice, of similar kind to skipping school, sneaking girls into the basement, or whatever. It differs only in degree. But if everyone had to take responsibility for their poor choices, maybe we would all think a little harder before choosing.
