School shooting as "terrorism"?

I think you're right and that charge is probably overreach.

Which is a pity, as it could throw the whole case into issue. The press and the public won't take kindly to a prosecution where they perceive the DA is trying to promote their own personal agenda, regardless of what that agenda is or the egregiousness of the crime. While that's not necessarily what's going on here, I can see how it could easily be spun that way.

Multiple murder? Of course. Assault and weapons charges? Absolutely. And when the inevitable civil lawsuit happens - battery, wrongful death, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, depraved indifference to human life - those all work just fine and are appropriate. Regardless of anyone's feelings about the case, about guns, or about the police, and regardless of whether any of these charges or civil causes of action could or would succeed, they are all appropriate.

But terrorism? Unless this kid has some manifesto hidden away somewhere, that's a hard nope and it also calls into question whether the prosecutor even knows/understands the laws they're supposed to be helping to enforce and uphold.

The way the prosecutor put it is that people will be be terror over this event for some time, that along with killing as many as he could the perpetrator had it in his mind to sow terror into the minds of surviving victims.

My first thought is that maybe there is a stretch element here, but thinking further I wondered if blowing up a bldg with no victims is terrorism, how do four dead bodies in a school trivialize the meaning of the word terror.

Sometime, also, I wonder about the racial, cultural, political value wrapped into the word and realize it includes minor white native born, "Christian" Americans, too. I do believe sowing terror was his mind and in his method.

You could make this argument about every crime, especially personal assaults and crimes using weapons. What makes "terrorism" unique from just everyday violence is the political element, using violence to promote a viewpoint or deter your political opponents. That might be trying to shut down unflattering depictions of your favorite prophets or pushing your view of racial purity but if every murder, assault and home invasion is terrorism, it loses any meaning.

I don't think a crook shooting a cashier after robbing him had any intent to create terror.

Intent is operative word. Did that kid include an element of terror, did he create terror as separate element of his crime, as well as murder?

Besides, in criminal law there are sanction on making terroristic threats, for example.

Intent is the operative word but not in making someone scared. The definition of terrorism: "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims." If the intent is political, it can be called terrorism. I think you'd be hard pressed to say the intent is political here. Committing a scary, violent crime is not terrorism unless there is a political element and losing that distinction just allows prosecutors to pile a terrorism charge on any time they want to make headlines.

A little soon to be certain of what his motivation was, but I think he was going beyond scared and well into terror. It wasn't as if he shook a pistol at someone; he went up and down the hallway shooting into barricaded doors looking for more victims.

Again we have already laws regarding terroristic threats as charges and enhancement of other charges.

What makes you think the their was no political agenda here?

Why? Because he was 15. I was troubled when I read he was being charged with terrorism because, I too, think of terrorism as political.

Because terrorism isn't very effective unless you let people know why you are committing it. The men who attacked Charlie Hebdo or the World Trade Center or the government building in Oklahoma City did not keep their motives secret, they wanted everyone to know why they did it. If the DA in this case did not say she had evidence that points to a political motive, only that people were scared, this is not terrorism. There are plenty of charges here that are completely legitimate. My concern is that we shouldn't throw the charge of terrorism around without meaning (or give it whatever meaning we want.) Soon we'll be charging rapists and armed robbers with terrorism.

The Boston bombers were accused of using WMDs. The same reason was used to invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein didn't have any either.

I have to admit I haven't followed the news of the shooting by the 15 year old in Michigan. Is there something important I missed?

He's now being charged with terrorism amongst other crimes.

The question I have is: what was his psychological motivation for killing?
Was he bullied? Was it displaced anger at his parents or other authority figures? Why isn't the cause and motivation foremost in our minds and in the minds of authorities?
Was he a lost, floundering, toxic child desperately in need of psychological evaluation and help which he didn't get?


Can we get into his head with intense evaluation by a psychologist or a psychiatrist? Can we stop further potential murderers by recognizing and addressing psychological issues in potential shooters?

Is it enough to punish offenders or should we try to address the causes? Are guns and incarceration the end-all answers to all problems?

Are these shooting events doomed to be nothing more than forgotten spectacles, big stories for the Press? Do we learn nothing from them? Is it one event after another arousing our emotions like a sporting event which seems ever important at the time but then loses its impetus until the next event?

I spent my first 16 years in Kenosha living in the house right near the spot on Sheridan Road where Kyle Rittenhouse began his shooting spree. People formed two groups either for or against Kyle Rittenhouse like it was a sporting event, another spectacle to arouse our emotions.
And what have we learned about the psychological make-up of Kyle Rittenhouse and his motivations? Is he another a lost, floundering, toxic child desperately in need of psychological evaluation and help or is he nothing more than a cause célèbre.
To some he's murderer and to others he's a hero. Have we learned anything?

To date, they're unsure of his motives. It was definitely premeditated as he'd written about it. The shooting was aided by his father recently purchasing a gun. He was indiscriminate about his victims.

Michigan Shooting Suspect’s Parents Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter
[/b]

“Help me,” the teen accused of killing four of his classmates had scrawled in class hours before the shooting. His parents refused to bring him home and didn’t ask whether he had the handgun they had bought for him days before, a prosecutor said.

The gun was an early Christmas gift from his parents: a semiautomatic 9-millimeter Sig Sauer handgun. “My new beauty,” Ethan Crumbley, 15, called it.

The day after Thanksgiving, he and his father had gone together to a Michigan gun shop to buy it. He and his mother spent a day testing out the gun, which was stored unlocked in the parents’ bedroom. On Monday, when a teacher reported seeing their son searching online for ammunition, his mother did not seem alarmed.

“LOL I’m not mad at you,” Jennifer Crumbley texted her son. “You have to learn not to get caught.”

A day later, the authorities say the teenager fatally shot four classmates in the halls of Oxford High School in suburban Detroit, using the handgun his parents had bought for him.

On Friday, Karen D. McDonald, the Oakland County prosecutor, laid out those and other chilling details as she took the rare step of filing involuntary manslaughter charges against the accused gunman’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley.

~~

Do you think the parents are culpable and should be charged? There is much more information in the link below.

Read more here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/us/crumbley-parents-charged-michigan-shooting.html

This is a tough one for me. Normally I would say no, don't charge the parents. Even with the “you have to learn not to get caught” text, this seems like a gun household where they had just bought a new gun and probably looked forward to shooting so it's not all that weird for the son to be looking up ammo. Shooting hobbyists would probably be planning a family shooting range trip.
That said, the parents sound (based on press accounts which likely have some degree of sensationalism in them) especially lax.

I don't buy 'the kid was normal' routine. No kid who goes out and commits mass murder has a normal mindset. Nor does such a demented mindset develop at the flip of a switch - it otherwise always existed in some form, or there was a noticable deterioration - ie. either way the parents would (or very much should) be aware of such....yet they went out and bought him a handgun anyway. What sort of parents would do that?

I do agree.

Not only that, but that morning they had a school meeting in which it was strongly suggested they get their son counselling but they wouldn't agree to it.

He must have been exhibiting some strange behaviours for the school to have called the parents in. In hindsight, they should have suspended or expelled him for a while.

Wonder what his classmates have to say about it. I'm sure it'll be in the news at some point at which time someone will wander in here and claim extreme liberals are mocking him and that it's disgusting.

There was a very disturbing drawing he made the day of the shooting. That's why his parents were called in, but no one asked him where the gun was, they just sent him with his backpack back to class.

Certainly looks like it, the shooting just happened a bit sooner than originally planned.

Very lackadaisical on everyone's part. I'd have asked him to explain the drawing and checked his belongings. I believe the parents went to the shooting range and tried out the gun before they gave it to the kid. What 15 yr old needs a gun? Did the parents even tell the school he had one?

This whole gun culture is so foreign to me. And I do think there were probably earlier signs of disturbing behaviour - like someone here said, you don't just flip a switch and become a rampant shooter. If so, shame on the school for not dialling down and putting the protection of everyone else first. Obviously the parents are flippant about it (given the mom's text).