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I hate criminals.
More than that, I hate STUPID criminals. I hate people who commit a crime, particularly a terrible one, then wonder why they’re all of a sudden facing the consequences. I realize what passes for the justice system has used bleeding-heart misplaced sympathy and a stream of psychobabble to make it seem that no one could possibly be guilty of anything, but still. As a responsible American, as someone who believes in cause and effect, freedom and responsibility, things like that tend to burn me up.
Case in point: A fourteen year-old boy, Nathaniel Brazill, fatally shot one of his teachers over a trivial disagreement. He stole the gun, took it to school, brandished it in the teacher’s face, and shot him dead at close range. Oh, all of that is "alleged," of course, another feel-good term designed to make criminals feel better and to threaten misspeakers with still more litigation. Now that he’s on trial and facing 25 years to life in prison, he’s come to the realization that plugging his teacher wasn’t the smartest thing to do.
And on top of that, he’s sorry.
Well whoop-dee-doo. You bloody well should be sorry, Nathaniel. You should be sorry you’re another stupid teenager who decided the best way to solve a problem is to find a gun. You should be sorry your worthless life is over at the ripe old age of fourteen. You should be sorry you’re going to get ritually ass-raped behind bars for the next fifty or so years. Yeah, be sorry for all of that.
But don’t you DARE be sorry you killed that man.
You meant to do it. You stole the gun, stuck it in his face, and fired. You meant to kill him. Don’t you dare insult everyone’s intelligence by pretending you’re sorry after the fact. You’re an idiot and you killed a man because the only outlet for idiocy like yours is at the end of a gun. Now shut up and deal with it.
Witness some pearls of wisdom about this case, all culled from the Associated Press:
"At his trial, Brazill had insisted that he only meant to scare the teacher . . ."
Scare him, huh? I think he ended up pretty scared. How much of a cretin do you have to be to think bringing a gun to school and waving it in someone’s face is the best way to scare them? And since when it is wise for a student to "scare" a teacher? They’re adults and authority figures, and they’re in schools to teach halfwitted punks like Brazill and try to make them into something productive. It’s a national problem that teachers have lost the respect of students, and this is a sad manifestation of that problem.
More: "The first witness for the defense said Brazill was a ‘pot boiling over’ following his suspension and after years of silence about physical abuse of his mother by boyfriends."
If there’s one thing I am sick to death of, it’s people citing physical and sexual abuse in a family as an excuse for a teenager to commit all manners of atrocities. Three words of advice for these "troubled" teens: DEAL WITH IT. You’re going to be a goddamn adult, and then you’re going to have to deal with a lot worse, and do so in environments that tolerate few or no excuses. I have no sympathy at all for people who exploit one of the bleeding-heart flaws in the legal system to reduce or eliminate their sentences. That flaw needs to be eliminated, but that’s a ridiculously convoluted solution, since there are so many reasons for its existence.
At the heart of this case is the debate about whether someone who is only fourteen is too young to be sentenced to life in prison. Is it safe to assume that we’ve all seen "Baretta?" Do I need to sing the theme for you? As to the question about whether or not fourteen is too young to spend your life in jail, I say hell no.
You do the math: you’re old enough to get your hands on a gun. You’re old enough to try to "scare" someone by waving that gun in his face. You’re old enough to pull the trigger at close range and kill him. Guess what that makes you? Old enough to rot in jail.
And that’s what I hope happens to Nathaniel Brazill and all the teenaged miscreants like him. The ones who think intimidation and guns are ways to solve problems. I hope they rot in jail until the day they die. I hope they’re continually denied parole. I hope they have to deal with their family and friends dying, just like the families of their victims had to deal with loss.
I hate stupid criminals. "Alleged" stupid criminals, of course.
Dr. Tom
26 July 2001