Not going to bury it in the stupid gun news thread.
“Prosecutors filed charges today against three Oklahoma teens accused of killing an Australian baseball playerbecause they were “bored” and “wanted to see someone die.”
Two teenagers, ages 15 and 16 years old, were charged with first-degree murder and were ordered to be held without bond.
A third suspect, age 17, was charged with use of a vehicle in the discharge of weapon and being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder.”
“The suspects followed Lane, 22, as he jogged alongside a road in Duncan, Okla., Friday afternoon, shot him in the back and left him to die on the side of the road, Duncan Police Chief Danny Ford told ABCNews.com”
Sick - just repulsive - glad I left Oklahoma this spring.
Where were the parents? Please charge them with something. I have no problems with guns used responsibly. Store them right. Get the right training for CCW, target shooting, hunting - great.
I know it’s hard for us sane folk to get our heads around, but this is nothing new.
Thrill killings have been a part of history for long time. Súil Dubh is right. I am not a pro-gun person, but we can no more blame guns for this than we can blame Johnny Cash for mentioning a thrill killing in his song.
If these morons didn’t have access to a gun, I think they would have found another weapon to evil with in the name of fun.
True that another weapon would likely have been used. A bloke I know was knocked off his motorcycle by someone in a car using a baseball bat. Damn lucky not to have died.
But…guns are more deadly than baseball bats. Quicker, much harder to dodge, easier to conceal, etc. And they work at extended ranges. Guns make the existing problem a lot worse.
I think what the media really needs to play up in these cases is not so much the sensationalism, but the consequences.
These young men will spend most of the rest of their lives behind bars. The best years of their lives, where they should be working, going to school, dating, getting married, having kids, owning a house, seeing the world.
Because as of now, they get none of that. They just threw away all of those normal and good life experiences that they could have had, on a moment of terrifying stupidity.
They didn’t just destroy one man’s life, they destroyed their own as well.
And THAT is the story that needs to be told if we want others to not walk the same path. Not “guns are evil” or anything else. Just that they threw away the entire world of their own potential, on one stupid act.
I’ll give you a tip mate, if someone had come up to a fit 23 year old Australia from the northern suburbs of Melbourne with a bat or a knife he would have stood a Fucking chance.
Of course you can point to the easy availability of guns, it would be pretty damn hard for a teenager to get a gun in Australia!
Hello, newbie here. “Here” is in the High Desert of Southern California, home state of the drive by.
The teens p* me off to no end, but only a little less than media coverage sensationalism and deathly drive for media bites at whatever cost. Every time I wonder which is worse - the parents who apparently haven’t been paying attention to what their kids are into, the kids themselves and their gnat-level intelligence, or the media.
Too many “kids” don’t see it that way. They already presume at best that their chances to really enjoy rather than just endure life are slim, or at worst that the system is contrived to deny them the chance. They’re not just bored in the sense of there being nothing good on TV. They’re bored as in they are numb to existence. The other guy’s life is worth nothing and their own just very little above that.
This would never have happened if the college student was armed so he could defend himself. When are people going to realize that trying to limit peoples constitutional rights to carry guns on college campuses is always going to end in the kind of tragedy.
