SportsAndLady;1541364 wrote:Why do you care so much if a teenage scumbag with intent to seriously injure innocent people is gone from this earth?

Let me guess, you believe he can be rehabilitated don't you?

Well, "rehabilitated" seems like an inaccurate term for what I think, but sure. Stupid kids who make stupid decisions often enough grow up into well-functioning, productive members of society all the time.

As for why I care if a teenage "scumbag" with intent to seriously injure innocent people is gone from the earth, maybe I view life as being more valuable than others. Perhaps I view the loss of life as a last resort, and something about which one ought not be flippant. Perhaps because the concept of a "teenage scumbag" is 100% subjective. Perhaps because there are too many examples of kids like this getting wake-up calls and becoming the kinds of people I'm happy are alive today, and who I regularly see doing good things to try to keep other teens from making these kinds of stupid decisions.

Perhaps just because I'm not thoughtlessly willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Are there kids who will go on to lead lives as criminals? Sure. However, I know I made stupid, occasionally violent, decisions as a teenager. I'd like to think I'm "rehabilitated" (whatever that word actually means) under what you're suggesting. I'd like to think that, despite those decisions, people around me are glad I'm still around.

Do I think they need to be taught a lesson? Sure. Would I mind seeing them get roughed up in a failed attempt to play this game? Absolutely. Do I think they're innocent little children who don't know what they're doing? Absolutely not. They're teenagers, and they know better. But I would rather not see a stupid decision like this be the reason they die. I'm not saying I'd blame someone for shooting them. I wouldn't at all. But I still hope it wouldn't come to that.

O-Trap;1541371 wrote:Well, "rehabilitated" seems like an inaccurate term for what I think, but sure. Stupid kids who make stupid decisions often enough grow up into well-functioning, productive members of society all the time.

Hate crimes where the black youths are targeting vulnerable (often elderly) white people goes well beyond a kid just making a stupid decision.

Al Bundy;1541378 wrote:Hate crimes where the black youths are targeting vulnerable (often elderly) white people goes well beyond a kid just making a stupid decision.

This. They didn't steal a candy bar. They tried to knock out an 87 year old man.

O-Trap;1541371 wrote:Well, "rehabilitated" seems like an inaccurate term for what I think, but sure. Stupid kids who make stupid decisions often enough grow up into well-functioning, productive members of society all the time.

First, it's a stretch to assume these stupid thugs will "learn".

Second, when you say "productive" we're talking a pretty low ceiling...no big loss to society.

Al Bundy;1541378 wrote:Hate crimes where the black youths are targeting vulnerable (often elderly) white people goes well beyond a kid just making a stupid decision.

I have to agree with Al on this. Intentionally targeting white people is a hate crime and should be handled as such.

Al Bundy;1541378 wrote:Hate crimes where the black youths are targeting vulnerable (often elderly) white people goes well beyond a kid just making a stupid decision.

That's subjective. You can think that if you'd like, but it's a value comparison with no factual evidence to determine a distinction.

SportsAndLady;1541382 wrote:This. They didn't steal a candy bar. They tried to knock out an 87 year old man.

Okay, so who gets to pick just where the line is between them?

What if they'd knocked out a 19-year-old black kid?

Suppose one kid jumps a peer and, though unprovoked, beats him in the head until he goes into a seizure and the victim has to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance, but it wasn't a result of this game. Where does that fall in your spectrum of who you shouldn't care about taking a couple bullets to the head?

gut;1541389 wrote:First, it's a stretch to assume these stupid thugs will "learn".

Not historically. There are plenty of kids who commit acts that we'd call violent (hell, fighting in the school yard is violent), but who grow up to be positive influences in society. Without trying to find them, I know of too many personally.

gut;1541389 wrote:Second, when you say "productive" we're talking a pretty low ceiling...no big loss to society.

Productive being a positive overall effect. Maybe no big loss, but then, society wouldn't miss a lot of people who haven't played this game, either. It would still be sad for them to take two in the head.

rmolin73;1541393 wrote:I have to agree with Al on this. Intentionally targeting white people is a hate crime and should be handled as such.

I don't disagree with that at all.

I just don't prefer to see anyone gunned down, particularly if it's the result of a stupid game played by stupid teens.

I also don't prefer that anyone gets gunned down. But people have to stop being so hesitant to acknowledge what's going on more and more frequently. Blacks are targeting whites with violence. If it's not dealt with its going to get worse. Some black youth have no regard for life.

O-Trap;1541401 wrote:That's subjective. You can think that if you'd like, but it's a value comparison with no factual evidence to determine a distinction.

It's subjective whether or not it is more than just a "boys will be boys" moment for a group of teenagers to violently attack a lone elderly person?

rmolin73;1541411 wrote:I also don't prefer that anyone gets gunned down. But people have to stop being so hesitant to acknowledge what's going on more and more frequently. Blacks are targeting whites with violence. If it's not dealt with its going to get worse. Some black youth have no regard for life.

I agree. It is a problem indeed. Black-on-white crime needs to be viewed, and dealt with, in the same way as white-on-black crime.

We've already seen it get worse, but I don't think a devolution into a desire to see people die is going to help. If anything, I think it will hurt if the entire culture adopts the same view.

For the record, my contention with wanting them to be dead (in my mind, a strange thing to need to defend) isn't a race or even age thing, though I suppose the tragedy of one of them being shot and killed is indeed more about the fact that they're young, but still not whether or not they're black, white, or somewhere in between.

Al Bundy;1541414 wrote:It's subjective whether or not it is more than just a "boys will be boys" moment for a group of teenagers to violently attack a lone elderly person?

Actually, yeah. You seem to think that either kids should get a slap on the wrist or we shouldn't be sad they catch two between the eyes. I'd say there's a little room between there. Wouldn't you?

I hinted at this earlier, but when I was a teen, I jumped a kid and beat him until an ambulance had to come take him to the hospital, because after so many blows to the head he'd begun seizing.

It was unprovoked. He was defenseless (I outweighed him by a good 50 pounds). He was unsuspecting. There was no justification for it. I just wanted to beat the shit out of somebody, and he seemed like a prime candidate.

Was I a teenage scumbag? Would it have been just as well if I'd taken a bullet? Was rehabilitation outside the bounds of reality? Low ceiling and all that?

Another example:

A friend of mine, who works at the local youth center grew up in the area. He'd been arrested for a number of things, including assault, by the time he was 19. Today, he has a college degree and has committed his life to trying to show other kids in the same neighborhood just how stupid that kind of life is, and how much better it is if you get out of it.

Finally, a third:

A guy I met in college, actually, in little Winona Lake, Indiana had done 30 years for second-degree murder when he was 19. 33 years later, he graduated from college, at the age of 52, and he actually walked the same day I did. Today, he runs an inner-city ministry to help kids develop trade skills to give them employment prospects and keep them off the streets.


Yes, I think it's sad if a punk kid gets gunned down doing something stupid, violent or not. I'm not saying it's never warranted or necessary. I'm not saying the kid will always (or even usually) turn into a shining example of a citizen.

I'm just saying it should be the last option, because the potential is there for a once-stupid kid with a penchant for violence to grow up and not follow in that pattern.

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen.

Hopefully, some kids read this and figure out that it's not only mean and stupid, but it's not even in their own best interest.

Knockout Game Turns Deadly: 60 Year Old Woman Shoots and Kills 2 Teens After Being Punched

O-Trap;1541333 wrote:I'm betting they'd think twice if you so much as brandished a gun or pointed it at them. Nobody dies, and the kids stop playing this stupid game. Everyone wins.

You know that's illegal, right?

O-Trap;1541440 wrote:Sooner or later, it was bound to happen.

Hopefully, some kids read this and figure out that it's not only mean and stupid, but it's not even in their own best interest.

Knockout Game Turns Deadly: 60 Year Old Woman Shoots and Kills 2 Teens After Being Punched

Stand your ground. Imagine that.

WebFire;1541491 wrote:You know that's illegal, right?

I don't know about Ohio, but in other states, it isn't illegal if it is done to prevent what the person believes to be unlawful interference with his or her person. This probably isn't the case in every state, but I know of at least one where "threatening" to use the weapon is protected in the same way that actually using the weapon is.

WebFire;1541492 wrote:Stand your ground. Imagine that.

Sad situation. Can't blame her one bit, though.

O-Trap;1541440 wrote: Hopefully, some kids read this ...

HIGHLY unlikely

gut;1541529 wrote:HIGHLY unlikely

Why? I saw it on Facebook. They could as well.

O-Trap;1541440 wrote:Sooner or later, it was bound to happen.

Hopefully, some kids read this and figure out that it's not only mean and stupid, but it's not even in their own best interest.

Knockout Game Turns Deadly: 60 Year Old Woman Shoots and Kills 2 Teens After Being Punched

O-Trap;1541501 wrote:
Sad situation. Can't blame her one bit, though.

Even though I know I should, I don't feel sadness at all for these teens--not one bit.

vball10set;1541554 wrote:Even though I know I should, I don't feel sadness at all for these teens--not one bit.

I don't either. I'm also with Gut about these idiots reading this and it changing a damn thing.

O-Trap;1541538 wrote:Why? I saw it on Facebook. They could as well.

They have to see it, be able to read it, want to read it, and then learn from it....that's called a sucker's bet in Vegas

gut;1541577 wrote:They have to see it, be able to read it, want to read it, and then learn from it....that's called a sucker's bet in Vegas

The title is short enough you could read it practically without making a conscious decision to. And I daresay that the title itself could speak to the self-interest of even the most ignorant person. "People are getting shot doing what I'm doing." Even the most intense narcissist would give it pause, if only out of a desire for self-preservation.

O-Trap;1541440 wrote:Sooner or later, it was bound to happen.

Hopefully, some kids read this and figure out that it's not only mean and stupid, but it's not even in their own best interest.

Knockout Game Turns Deadly: 60 Year Old Woman Shoots and Kills 2 Teens After Being Punched

it is too bad she only got 2 of the 7. Hopefully the other 5 go to jail for a long time.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/charged-with-hate-crime-after-man-punched/article_b6b3ae42-3345-5f6c-aba4-2fddf0a7e40a.html

New York City police say one man was arrested and charged with assault as a hate crime after a 24-year-old says he was punched in the face........A 28-year-old man was arrested on charges of assault as a hate crime because the victim is Jewish.

Notice it doesn't say the race of the attacker and labels the victim as Jewish, not white.

Glory Days;1541846 wrote: Notice it doesn't say the race of the attacker and labels the victim as Jewish, not white.

It's a less polarizing "hate crime" if it's because the victim was Jewish and not because he was white?

Glad they charged him with a hate crime. Throw the book at these idiots. Oddly enough, if they were robbing these people they'd have a better defense that it was just an assault/mugging and not a hate crime.

Hope these kids enjoy this game. They play a similar game in prison, only it's called "Rape"

gut;1541863 wrote:Hope these kids enjoy this game. They play a similar game in prison, only it's called "Rape"

From what I'm told, this doesn't happen nearly as often as we think it does (per the friend I mentioned who did the stint for Murder 2).

gut;1541863 wrote:It's a less polarizing "hate crime" if it's because the victim was Jewish and not because he was white?

sure i havent studied every incident of "knockout", but based on every incident that I have seen it has mostly been a black vs white crime. if they list the victim as white, then most people will assume the suspect was black and be up in arms. if the victim is jewish, the suspect could be anyone and it wont get as much attention.