To: Parents of teenagers
From: Mitch Berg, veteran
Re: Crazy kids.
All,
In the wake of last weeks’ shooting of a Saint Paul-area teenager by a carry permittee, we heard the usual response from the kid’s parents; “he was a good kid”, “he’d have never hurt anyone”, and “if he’d known someone had a gun, he’d have dropped his”.
Look – teenagers are difficult. I had two – and my kids’ teenage years damn near killed me. And you can be Parent of the Year and still have kids go off the path on you, just like kids raised in crack dens with no parents can go to Harvard and become doctors. Most of us are somewhere in between; imperfect people doing an imperfect job of raising imperfect people.
Now, the kid killed in mid-robbery last week was allegedly linked to gang activity – but let’s leave all of that out for the moment. Let’s address the mom’s statement, “He’d have dropped the gun if he’d have known someone else had one”.
Forget the obvious question – what, as long as he’s dealing with defenseless people, he’ll wave a gun around?
What would you think if someone said “If I knew I was going to cause an accident, I wouldn’t have driven drunk.” How about “If I’d have known I was going to catch AIDS, I’d have worn a condom,” or “if I’d have known I was going to break three vertebrae and end up in traction for six weeks I’d have never jumped off the cliff?” Or “If I’d known that was a cop, I wouldn’t have asked him to bid on those Malaysian girls I had in the van”.
Not much, right? Because actions have consequences, and some of them are unintended.
Pointing a gun is one of them. It is, in and of itself, a lethal threat.
Here’s the deal; A gun – or any weapon that a jury would look at and go “yep, that looks like an immediate threat to my life” – can kill a person in less time than you’ve spent reading this paragraph.
When a person is faced with what they reasonably believe to be an immediate lethal threat (and isn’t a willing participant, and makes a reasonable effort to retreat), the law says they can use lethal force in self-defense. The law doesn’t require the person to be a clairvoyant mind-reader; they they don’t have to try to divine whether your son really means it, or whether the gun is loaded, or whether he’s really a nice kid who’ll deflate in the face of a threat. The time to make that clear came before he drew the gun, or, God willing, after.
For the love of God, tell your idiot teenagers that waving weapons in peoples’ faces is, in fact, justification for shooting back. Cops will do it. 200,000 Minnesota carry permittee can do it. I did.
If they absorb that, if nothing else, maybe we can avoid more of these episodes.
(Side question: I’m gonna guess he knew better not to point a gun at a big, nasty gang-banger – right?)
That is all.
Crazy kids, indeed. In addition to this story in yesterday’s paper there were accounts of a 14-year-old Wisconsin kid on a crime spree in Minnesota and a group of community center youth basketball players between ages 12 and 18 assaulting homeless people at a tournament in Wichita.
School can’t start soon enough.
Mitch; your fourth to last paragraph indicates that you have shot back. Am I reading that right?
Well said, BTW.
NW: and I thought youth basketball stopped crime!
Updates on St Paul PP web site. The little thug used a racial slur against his victim, so that would make this a hate crime also. And if I understand the story correctly, they are saying he is the same person (with his little thug buddies) who stole a car earlier in the evening and robbed another man at gun point in East St Paul.
“I thought youth basketball stopped crime!”
I suspect the Minneapolis youth basketball team accused of assault in Wichita were not composed of Norwegians and Swedes.
The article also mentions other kids, bad kids, gravitated towards him, as if it was some kind of leadership ability or his personal charm. Maybe parents and social workers can take that as a signal the neglected child is affirming the bad kids’ thug behavior and is being drawn in.
There is an accusation in this:
“If he’d known someone had a gun, he’d have dropped his.”
If the robbery victim didn’t display his gun before shooting, it was murder.
If the robbery victim did display his gun, Broadbent dropped his gun, and it was murder.
Emery, please note that when you account for whether mom and dad were married when Junior was born, most of the race and ethnicity based differences in crime disappear. Plus, if you’re wondering whether Norwegian and Swedish kids can misbehave, is our state’s “football” team called the Vikings because of bands of roving accountants and Lutheran clergymen?
Concealed carry permit holders RARELY shoot defensively like this.
You can tell your kids not to wave guns in people’s faces, like you can tell your kids not to have unprotected sex — waving around something else irresponsibly. It is absolutely no guarantee they will behave appropriately or wisely or responsibly.
What the adults should be doing is keeping guns out of the hands of these kids, and it is the fault of the opponents of gun control that those who should not have guns can get them so easily.
The solution is not concealed carry; the solution is not shooting teens who then lose the chance to outgrow their irresponsible years as kids. The solution is not having these situations in the first place.
I hope the kids are wearing less on you now that they are older (doubt it but hope so). I think you are a very caring parent, one of the things I admire most about you. So reading this, I thought of how you would feel if it were Zam who got shot dead. I think you would rather less lethal force had resolved the situation, and that you would also want Zam not to have a gun in the first place.
The question becomes one of committing to stopping the problem, not the violent resolution which is not much of a solution.
Hugs to you, Bunn and Zam.
DG,
Concealed carry permit holders RARELY shoot defensively like this.
Well, good. That’s the point. Shall Issue IS more about deterrence than carnage.
You can tell your kids not to wave guns in people’s faces, like you can tell your kids not to have unprotected sex — waving around something else irresponsibly. It is absolutely no guarantee they will behave appropriately or wisely or responsibly.
No, DG, there are no absolute guarantees with kids. But kids that come up with some sense of consequences are a lot less likely to do either.
What the adults should be doing is keeping guns out of the hands of these kids
Well, yeah…
, and it is the fault of the opponents of gun control that those who should not have guns can get them so easily.
Well, no. Not even a little.
The solution is not concealed carry; the solution is not shooting teens who then lose the chance to outgrow their irresponsible years as kids.
Well, if you’re the person looking down the barrel of a gun, how can you tell if the person holding it is an “irresponsible kid”, or an incorrigible cold-eyed killer just getting his start in life?
You actually can’t – and the law doesn’t require you to.
The solution is not having these situations in the first place.
I hope the kids are wearing less on you now that they are older (doubt it but hope so). I think you are a very caring parent, one of the things I admire most about you.
We’ve bid the teenage years adieu with no remorse whatsoever.
So reading this, I thought of how you would feel if it were Zam who got shot dead.
Depends. Was Zam shot while out wilding and pointing a gun at a stranger, trying to rob them? I don’t even want to think about what I’d feel.
If – as is much more likely the case these days – he were shot by a punk trying to get $20 off him?
I think you would rather less lethal force had resolved the situation, and that you would also want Zam not to have a gun in the first place.
And if the alternative had been an innocent third party getting killed?
You keep leaving that out.
The question becomes one of committing to stopping the problem, not the violent resolution which is not much of a solution.
If you are the innocent person – someone walking along River Road, or a woman with a violent stalker, or someone trying to come home from work in a bad neighborhood – it’s not “a solution”. It’s “what you do not to get killed”.
No, really. Self-defense DOES require an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm to stand up (or to not get charged at all). It’s not about “solving” anything; it’s about life or death, right now.
By law.
A law you apparently need to bone up on.
Hugs to you, Bunn and Zam.
Well, thanks. Back atcha.