[Dragula219]

You make some good points, so I'll respond the best I can. Just a note, whenever I refer to "blame" or "fault" in this response, I mean finding them guilty of the crime committed.

Originally Posted by jewpinthethird

But why should we stand around and wait for kids to commit crimes when we can stop it at the source. I mean, if planes kept falling out of the sky because the wing wasn't bolted down right, you wouldn't go blaming the wing for breaking, you'd blame the mechanic whose job was to make the plane safe for flight. In this case, parents are the mechanics. It is their job to teach their children how to be obedient and the difference between right from wrong through discipline, if they fail to do this, the child will grow up social problems.

Sure, in the situation you explained the blame could be on the mechanic, but that is a completely different situation from a child shooting someone. The problem with your analogy is that the wing is an inanimate object, not a person. If the wing could chose to not be bolted down right (for whatever reason) you would blame the wing. No matter how good the mechanic is, no matter how hard he bolted it down, if the wing has a choice you can't blame the mechanic. Same thing with a child shooting; No matter how "good" parents are, the child still makes the decision to shoot someone of his/her own accord. Now, don't get me wrong, I think that parents do play a major role in prevention of these kind of things, but prevention and fault are completely different things. You can't say it's the police's fault that a shooting occurred because they failed to prevent it.

Originally Posted by jewpinthethird

Or a better analogy: parents acts as a window to protect the child, while at the same time exposing their children to the real world. Parents who don't pay attention to their children are likely to have their window smashed, exposing the child to the elements.

Well, I guess you could argue that if they are at a young enough age to not understand the consequences of their actions (which happens to be one of the things that must be proven in court to be found guilty of a crime.) In that case, I believe it is nothing more than an accident. You still can't blame the parents in my opinion. Sure, they possibly could have prevented it, but you can't charge someone with a crime because they failed to prevent it. It's not like they told the kid to go shoot somebody (and if they did they obviously should be found guilty.)

Originally Posted by jewpinthethird

Children can't comprehend why adults think and act the way they do because they have a different perspective about the world. For the first decade of life or so, a child is extremely egocentric. They don't realize that the other people have feelings, in fact, they are fairly oblivious to others. Children aren't little adults, they are stupid little adults who don't understand the consequences of their actions.

That is an extremely general statement, you can't say all kids have no understanding of the world. You are also referring to a much younger age than most school shootings occur. As far as I knew, we were talking about early high school students, because that is the most common time shootings occur. Also, the same time everyone has been trying to blame them on video games and parents and whatever they want to. Honestly I believe even without the help of parents a child that age knows the consequences of his/her actions, and is basically a "little adult".

Originally Posted by jewpinthethird

A child is a clean slate (to an extent) and the personality of that child largely depends on how good the parents are at their job. The better they are, the more likely it is that the child will turn out normal. The worse, the more like likely it is that the kid will spend the rest of it's life jumping in between jailhouses and methlabs.

First, I don't necessarily believe that's true. I have many friends who came from broken homes and are just as functional as me or you, and I know many kids who come from secure homes and turn out to be crackheads (actually, it is a major trend at an expensive catholic high school near me. They have crazy coke/crack parties with lots of sex involved, I found it utterly hilarious.) My whole point is it doesn't matter, influence is not fault in my eyes. You can't find a parent guilty of murder because the didn't raise their child well enough. Not raising them well enough ≠ Putting a gun in their hand and telling them to shoot up a school.