Skald I did not know you had lost a child. As a father of two young boys, I am very sorry to hear that. It’s my worst fear and I have nightmares about losing one or both of them all the time.
I don’t want to be around when you try to calibrate it.
I can’t think of any possible explanation that would make me feel better about it.
See? I always overcomplicate these things.
I’m just going to stand behind you while you work this out.
This is the most illogical malarky I’ve ever heard. If it were adhered to then the whole world would be victim to attackers in every circumstance. As has been said, it is natural for a parent to care more for thier children than a stranger or thier OWN life. What if it were someone killing your kid? Let your kid be killed because you wouldn’t want someone else to kill your kid killing someone elses kid? Internal consistency my ass. Everybody in the victim/attacker situation is someones kid. Would you want your kid to be killed because he treated his attacker as his kid?
If my son were trying to break in somewhere and “came at” someone with a knife then I would understand his being shot. I wouldn’t like it but it would be understandable and logical. If the person were a confident enough shot to hit his shoulder I would be grateful but that anyone could expect that is illogical in a being attacked situation. If it were me being attacked and I did not have the responsibility of protecting my wife and daughter from possible death then I would likely give my life in a struggle to save his. Thankfully I did not raise a mentally or criminally deranged son. That can happen to the best of people and it is indeed sad.
This isn’t an original thought, I read this question elsewhere but it struck a nerve: did the boy have a life insurance policy taken out on him? and the girl?
Adopting a kid does not a saint make. He was fifteen and was adopted four years ago. Different people have different ideas about financial planning. (I know that’s flippant; it’s a defense mechanism.) Stranger things have happened. And before folks say “How could you?” mine and my brother’s price was the Social Security checks sent out each month, that we never benefitted from, because of the death of our father.
The boy was supposedly well-adjusted so this behavior was abberant.(sp) The scenerio presented was…what if the father said “Hey! Let’s play a prank on your aunt…” and everything fell into play.
Not saying that’s what happened at all. But sour grapes make whine.
I also have to say, tho—if you don’t have a gun (in the suburbs) you can’t shoot it. A trigger finger can punch out 911.
That very thing occurred to me almost immediately. But according to police statements the father has been crying incessantly and throwing up for days and generally carrying on in such an emotional way that I would think even the best of actors would have a hard time keeping up convincingly for such a long time. Plus he’s a highly regarded guy in the community for his love of his students and theirs of him and a long history of good works toward others, and it’s hard to believe he would visit such devastation on the rest of his family.
Plus, it turns out the boy may well have come from a rough background as he was adopted only four years ago as his father was about to be sent off to prison (for what I don’t know) and he and his sister were adopted just as they were about to be sent to an orphanage. So that gave him eleven years of apparently being raised by a single parent who eventually became prison fodder, and I doubt it was a happy and wholesome eleven years.
So all in all, I’m inclined to give the father the benefit of the doubt. Plus I’m sure the police will be looking into things like life insurance policies payable to the father, aunt and so forth.
Thank you.
It’s off topic, but a couple of things about this bug me. First, a gunshot wound to the shoulder is a lot more dangerous than you’re thinking it is; you can quite easily bleed out from one. Second, that hypothetical extremely competent shot is not going to be aiming for the shoulder in the first place, because competent marksman are always taught to aim for center of mass.
Why am I thinking of a ghillie (sp) suit right about now? And laughing?
That is, of course, if the kid did it for a prank. If he had other in mind, he got about a tenth of what he had coming.
Probably as well thought out as this prank:
Sasquatch stunt takes a tragic turn on highway
Someone did not know about the masked man fallacy. 
Tragic? Seems to be just Darwinism at work.
If I understood the facts correctly, the deceased was adopted?? If that is so, then I’m of the impression that he’s one of those psycho kids with a chip on his shoulder for the whole adoption thing. My final vote: kid was a Menendez wannabe.
You need to explain why the identity of the son underlines the lack of clarity of whether retreat was an option. Why is it more likely that retreat was an option in this scenario? What about the kid’s identity as the man’s son makes you doubt the idea that retreat was not an option?
IMO, if the story is presented at all, the adoption should be mentioned. It isn’t the job of a news service to decide what spin is appropriate, or what “political correctness” is to be served. Yes, mentioning the adoption can be considered unfair to “the adoption world,” but not mentioning it could be considered unfair to the “birth-parentage world.” Frankly, it would seem grossly dishonest not to mention the adoption.
The 15-year old victim was adopted at age 11 from a troubled home. When I noticed that, the episode suddenly seemed much more plausible.
ETA: I’m not inferring the kid was a psychopath. It’s enough to understand that the familial ties of someone adopted at age 11 are much weaker than those of a birth child.
No, he doesn’t. Because if you shot your son you’d be thinking the same thing. You’d constantly be second guessing yourself. That’s the point.
All of your logic for shooting the guy makes the implicit assumption that you don’t care about the identity of the attacker, but, in fact, unless you are some horrible monster, you do care. Unlike in other situations where you could convince yourself that the person was inhuman swine trying to kill you, you now have to face the fact that it was not. It was someone you loved. You know they were human.
We all think the lives of some people are more important than others. The only difference between this and what we label bigotry is that we think we have a legitimate reason to value our children more than other people, while we do not have a legitimate reason to value people who look like us more than other people.
Heck, this is why we are looking for some sign that the boy really was up to no good, as we want something that will remove the ambiguity of guilt for the father. If the son was about to rob the aunt, for example, then he wouldn’t have to think about whether or not he could have afforded to wait a couple seconds more, or to have quickly hidden somewhere. If he can blame the son, he can avoid having to concern himself with his own human foibles.
Then again, there are others who absolutely want to blame the father because it makes them feel better about the chances of something similar happening to them. They don’t want to accept that the same human foibles apply to them, too. Why knowing that your child would never be stupid enough to dress like a violent robber is not sufficient comfort, I don’t know.
Seconded.
Why didn’t either the father or the sister just call the cops? The shooter had no reason to even go outside. He wanted to be John Wayne. These are the consequences.
I’m sure he felt the threat was far too immediate given that his sister said her house was being broken into at that very moment.
Tell ya what though, should you ever find your home being broken into in the middle of the night do please feel to alert the police, whereupon you can roll over and go back to sleep confident in the ability of the police to respond and (nonviolently, I presume) apprehend the intruding burglar/rapist/torturer/murderer before any harm can come to you. Then all will end peacefully and happily in JoN land.
In the meantime, having had my home broken into in the middle of the night and the intruder frightened off by virtue of the fact I was able to arm myself, I’ll opt for the John Wayne approach over the think-of-the-bad-guy-and-hope-the-cops-arrive-before-something-bad-happens approach every time.