gungasnake wrote:In the case of true psychopaths, there's rally nothing any parent can do. Robert Hare's "Without Conscience" is likely the best book on the topic available to the layman. Hare says there's no such thing as a parent of a psychopath child who wouldn't be happy to hand the kid over to some government agency at age seven or eight.
It's true. This kid is, sadly, probably an anti-social personality, a sociopath, with a surface conception of what society deems wrong, but a personal inability to acknowledge these acts as truly "wrong". Kind of like, well, I know everyone else thinks killing someone is wrong, but I really don't see why and so that ideal does not apply to me. These type of people, from the age of children, have no emotion, no compassion, no sense of love, not like other people. The funny thing is that these sociopaths, on the outside, to others, appear to be rather charming, intelligent, sociable people much of the time, capable of going out, having fun, laughing, being sexually attracted to other people, but as far as emotions go, they can't really love anyone.
If it is true that this kid did all those things before, such as shooting the girl with a BB gun, threatening another boy with a gun, crashing the family van at ten years old, I am aghast that he was not put into counseling immediately. Sadly it is unlikely he would ever be "normal", but at least monitoring him might have given SOME insight into what he was thinking, so that it could have SOME chance of being interceded by someone. This is absolutely in no way a case of mental illness in which the person did not know right from wrong. As can be seen in the results of the boy's "gun safety course" test, he was fully aware how to handle a gun, that it was bad to even point one at someone, and he did it anyway, more than once, except the last time he killed someone instead of just threatening them.
People do not give enough credit to children. Yes, an 8 year old may not know how to safely handle a gun, but even most 8 year olds know from a young age that "guns are bad". I am only 25, but I do remember being 12 and 13 years old, and I sure as hell knew damn well that pointing a gun at someone and loading it with bullets and pulling the trigger would hurt or kill someone. Children make stupid decisions, but that doesn't mean they don't know what is wrong. A 12 year old is far from a small child such as a 5 year old who genuinly could think a gun was a toy.
Absolutely this boy should have been treated as an adult in trial. Six months of "therapy" in a juvenile hall is bulls**t and worthless. He needs a lifetime of therapy. Like I said, sociopaths are charming people normally, and have a way with words, and are very good at making people believe what they want. He will be relieased from juvenile hall in no time, and I guarantee you, he will hurt someone else before he dies.
I pity his family and anyone else he comes into contact with.
