Tangential note: Even so, I still find it hard to believe that it’s easier for kids to get guns than cigs, booze, or porn. Especially since the latter items are legal for any adults to buy and available about everywhere.
Probably depends on just where the kids are. So Cal vs rural Ok, there’s going to be different sins available.
I wouldn’t say either of the examples above prove that it’s easier to get a gun than cigarettes or booze. I’d even venture a guess that someone who is motivated to buy a gun probably has no problem shoplifting booze or cigarettes. It does show that it’s not hard to get a gun, though.
StG
The man who identified the boys, a Mr. Johnson, claims that there were gang members from an unidentified city recruiting in that area. He says that his son’s life was threatened if he didn’t join the gang and he has sent that child away to a safe place.
So that’s probably where the guns came from.
I can give a source but it’s difficult for me to see and type in the long strings of http.
If he is correct in the information that has come out in the last couple of days it appears to be a gang-related issue.
Unfortunately, race may in fact be relevant. From this site:
That’s the site I was paraphrasing. Thanks, Xema.
There’s a certain amount of, perhaps wishful, naivete in thinking that if some of the suspects were Black and one was White that no race issues were involved. Race isn’t about the color of your skin. Maybe the White kid had something to prove.
I’d rather just write it off to potentially good kids gone bad. At the bottom line that’s what it is.
But we do have that hate crime law on the books. So how will this be handled?
How?
Possession and sale of these guns is already illegal.
Stop-and-frisk everyone? Might work. Not constitutional.
If I knew how, I’d run for President. 
You win. 
I’d rather just write it off to potentially good kids gone bad. At the bottom line that’s what it is.
I’m pretty sure, based on preliminary information, that Edwards is a sociopath. Maybe in infancy he had the capacity to be a good kid, but likely not even then.
The other two could be weak willed followers, who got caught in the spell of a charismatic sociopath. In the same way that the Columbine killers were comprised of a sociopath, Eric Harris, and a weak-willed follower, Dylan Klebold.
As potential hate crimes are usually handled. If the evidence available fits the narrow criteria for a hate crime, the prosecutor may charge.
“It seems like a hate crime because the victim was white and some of the perps weren’t” is not enough, by itself, to merit hate crime charges.
Would Edwards’ tweets be enough?
The self anointed self appointed commentator on racial issues has declared the behavior is frowned upon.
Really? I don’t see much support for or against the idea of making the penalties for ‘thrill’ killings, or ‘gang initiation’ killing far more draconian than it is now. anyone fancy a poll?
I can say that if you take into consideration the declining crime rate, vs. the number of people incarcerated, putting people in jail seems to be correlated to the declining rate of crime. I don’t have any problem with people wanting to ruin their own personal lives by becoming an alcoholic in the gutter, or a junkie on a mattress in an abandoned factory building somewhere – their choice, and I wouldn’t make that behavior criminal until and unless they commit a criminal act…but violence against another person, particularly senseless violence, or hate crime, or …whatever…how can we not think that very extreme penalties would help curb those impulses???
SecretaryofEvil, you’ve still got it.
Because murder is not rational. If people thought about the consequences, they wouldn’t murder.
Clearly that datum must be excluded.
I thought a “spree” involved a series of acts. I don’t think this was a spree, but it sounds like it was on its way. The three were caught when they appeared in the murder vehicle at the home of a likely second target, whose father says it was a gang initiation. http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2013/08/23/08/40/chris-lane-murder-a-gang-initiation-claims-witness
The white one is the one who looks white in the picture.
I think they know which of them was mixed race based on information about whose parent was whose.
Or Cubans sailing to Miami.