Killers in gangs aren't "kids"

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  1. And sometimes killers are also children. It’s ugly, it contradicts all of our assumptions about childhood, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
    Children are different than adults, biologically and psychologically. I’ve had long conversations with a friend who’s a middle school teacher about how observing kids in their early teens is such an eye opener – they don’t seem to understand cause and effect the way adults do (until, suddenly, they do one day), they are just different. Their brains are still developing physically and this affects the way they act.
    They are children. Damaged children, perhaps, doing awful things, but still children.

  2. Long years ago, I served an internship in a juvenile prison. I did indeed find damage, but I really did not find children.
    There’s a developmental line that is crossed when passing from childhood into the teen years. It’s a bit of a blur during the pre-teens, but it’s real nonetheless. It’s not Polimom being hard-hearted or close-minded.
    John said,

    Children are different than adults, biologically and psychologically.

    That’s true. Children are also different from teens, biologically and psychologically, and teens are different from adults.
    I’m not saying that children never kill.  I can remember a case quite a number of years ago (was it Chicago?) where a 9-year old deliberately threw another child out of a window. There was vast damage there, too – obviously – but that child’s ability to process his action is radically different from those who walk around with guns, in groups, with intent.
    Yesterday, a judge in Colorado ruled that a 15-year-old can legally enter into common-law marriage. Sixteen year olds not only drive, they can often marry — usually with parental consent required, but not always. At 17, a “child” can enlist in the military with consent.
    The entire concept of chldhood is skewed.

  3. Polimom, John
    Alas, it is all too common for one (or both) sides in a highly charged political debate to try and strengthen their arguments by distorting the facts. One popular technique for doing so is to play with the definition of the beneficiaries and/or the victims–e.g. children.
    One of the most frequent examples in this area occurs when gun control legislation is being advocated. Specifically, it is the never ending efforts of the “gun control” lobby to whip up hysteria by claiming that “over 4,000 children a year die from firearms in the US”–a rate of ~11/day. The Second Amendment Foundation Online FAQ page addresses this claim (in point #32):

    Many Gun control advocates cite statistics that seem to show an epidemic of children dying due to gun-related violence. On the surface, 4,000 children dying per year is a very disturbing trend. However, one must delve into the statistics to realize that these gun-control advocates are misleading the public. The definition of children used when finding these statistics includes people 20 years old or younger, and some groups actually use the age 23 as a cut-off for a child. Using these misleading definitions, the numbers are about 11 killed per day. Of course, if you use what most people consider to be children as a cutoff – say ten years old – the number drops to .4 deaths per day. While still not perfect, it is a far sight better than the 11 that gun-control advocates want people to believe. Why is there such a huge difference? When including the upper ranges of the teenage bracket, gun deaths jump. This is due in large part to gang related violence. Also, it includes the majority of the people who constitute the very dangerous and often lethal drug trade. Imagine a drug deal going bad, and one party shooting another. According to gun control advocates, this constitutes a “child” who died due to firearm wounds. Or, maybe a methamphetamine dealer gets into a shootout with police, and loses. Again, this would be cited as a “child,” for purposes of scaring soccer moms everywhere.

    According to John Lott, the number of children, nine and under, who died from accidental gunshot wounds in 1996 was 42. Compare that with the 2,404 who died that year in car crashes, 805 who drowned, or 738 that died of burns. When viewed in that light, guns are not the child safety hazard many would have you believe. Not to mention, of course, that guns can be used to defend those very same children, and that they will statistically make the house safer for them to live in. (Seven Myths of Gun Control, pg 120)

    The Encyclopedia Britannica discusses the same issue and offers a different cutoff–and different fatality rate statistics– for the definition of a “child”–i.e. 14 years of age:

    Through use of misleading definitions, advocates on both sides of the debate have distorted some data. The organizers of the Million Mom March, for example, made much of the figure of “12 children who die every single day from gunfire.” This figure holds true only if persons aged 15–19 are counted as children. Deaths in this group usually occur because of older teenagers’ involvement in distinctly unchildlike activities, such as drug-related crime. Using a more usual definition of children—aged 14 or below—1.7 children die daily from gun violence, and the number drops to 1.3 when suicides are excluded.

    It is tragic when a child dies, but dishonest attempts to inflate the pool of victims (in a good cause of course) is never the right thing to do.

  4. Polmom said:

    Sixteen year olds not only drive, they can often marry — usually with parental consent required, but not always. At 17, a “child” can enlist in the military with consent.
    The entire concept of chldhood is skewed.

    The examples you gave (marrying, enlisting) have to do with signing contracts – and under the law minors may not enter into contracts without parental consent. This is strictly a ‘legal’ thing, and not related directly to the maturity level of the person.
    As far as children killing others is concerned, the fact that they are killers does not negate the fact that they are children. And, while teenagers are different from younger children, in reality they are probably the true “tweeners”, switching between being children and adults. They are, in many cases, physically very much like adults. They are also, in many other ways, very much like children – and this includes the fact that they aren’t always aware of concepts like “death is forever” and “what you see on TV isn’t always real.”
    I also agree with the statement about the concept of childhood being skewed. Unfortunately, we seem to think that it is “cute” to portray our children as miniature versions of adult humans, which leads to such wierdness as 8-year olds in ‘beauty pageants’ and kiddie pr0n films (and I am not sure that there is that much difference between the two, seeing as they are both manifestations of the “Lolita effect”.)
    Having dealt personally with a “juvenile offender” (and a violent one at that, if you call kicking a police officer in the crotch “violent”), I also saw damage – but underneath I saw a child who desperately needed help and didn’t have a clue as to how to go about asking for it. Fortunately, that child got help (after a fashion) and is now a reasonably responsible adult.
    ~EdT.

  5. @ “The Master”:
    Regardless of the agenda (hidden or otherwise) of those who are creating this data, the simple fact is that in the past 20 years or so we have seen a real rash of killings where the perpetrator is under the age of 18. I remember the first time I heard of a violent death taking place at a high school (where the brother of a student there came to school with a baseball bat and brained another student there), and it seemed so unreal. These days, it is common to read about this type of activity, and in fact one of my son’s schoolmates in high school was stabbed by another student – over a girl, I think.
    ~EdT.

  6. Ed,
    We can’t have this both ways. If, as you say, the contract of marriage requires a signature for minors because it’s “strictly a ‘legal’ thing, and not related directly to the maturity level of the person“, then you seem to be saying that at 16, they’re adult enough to marry and begin families?
    Or is it, as you also said, “They are, in many cases, physically very much like adults. They are also, in many other ways, very much like children – and this includes the fact that they aren’t always aware of concepts like “death is forever” and “what you see on TV isn’t always real.””
    I’m having trouble reconciling these two statements.
    Nor do I agree at all that teenagers do not understand the permanence of death. According to experts (link and link), that developmental milestone occurs around ages 6 – 11 (typically by 9 or 10). It’s also totally unrelated to the phenomenon of personal immortality. Teens “get it” that a bullet in the heart of another person kills them forever. They just don’t think it’ll ever happen to them.
    Some people, btw, don’t get this “I’m not immortal” thing until their thirties. However, it doesn’t make them children; it makes them reckless.
    IMHO, we’re suffering from a national schizophrenia — one that is often used against us, as The Master’s comment illustrates.

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