Looks like legally 14 is the line, but can’t find any data of “youngest.”
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Jesus Christ
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- There are at least a few states that do not have a lower limit for charging as an adult
God, we hate our children here, don’t we?
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Once they’re born, yes it would seem so.
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Morally, if not by the local law code, the gun owner did something very, very wrong when they let this 6 year old get their hands on this gun.
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This. I keep waiting for that part, just like in the Rittenhouse case. The press is covering it as though prosecutors have to choose which one is at fault here. The answer is both. The parents need to face charges/penalties for their role in these shootings, too.
Well, just as with everything else in the criminal injustice system, there are degrees of hatred.
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I can only think of one recent case where the parents were held responsible for a shooting, and it was that Michigan case, where the parents basically fled right after it happened.
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Their high school aged kid is also being held responsible, but he’s not just out of the “terrible twos”, which, in reality lasts until at least 4 or 5 (and parents who have been through it know all too well).
The incredibly young shooter in this case should not be tried as an adult, but definitely requires help his parents were never prepared to provide, or they fomented malicious behavior because they’re terrible people (lots of us in the wild had terrible, unfit, and/or abusive parents). Kids this young don’t normally understand death as a “forever” concept, which makes it hard to comprehend a kid this young having intention to kill.
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For comparison, under very limited circumstances guns are legal in the UK. A mate had a black powder + musket licenced for doing USA civil war reenactment. As he explained it, if someone got their hands on his weapon and used it for a crime he’d be punished about as hard as they were.
The Economists would call this “aligning incentives”. Society wants 6-yr olds to wander to school with a gun. With these rules the gun owner has the same incentive to stop the 6 yr old getting their hands on the gun.
In this state it appears that there really is no incentive for the owner to stop the 6 year old walking off with the gun.
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Yeah! I’m generally not a fan of kids being tried as adults, even ones that commit awful crimes. In this case, most certainly not.
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Never. Never try kids as adults. They aren’t so why pretend?
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It’s just a way of making sure some kids get harsher penalties in some cases or for certain crimes. IMO it’s trying to counter the idea of an innocent child held by most people, just like TPTB can undermine the presumption of innocence with some adults in court. It probably goes a long way in the court of public opinion, and the press rarely questions it.
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Sorry, what’s that?
I know there were some minor grumbling here during an horrific case where a child was raped and murdered horrifically by children. But they can’t be tried or punished as adults. These were 13 when they did the crime, so completely different from a six year old, but still unformed. Dangerous obviously, and quite likely not able to live normal lives ever, but not adults.
ETA
The Powers That Be. Makes sense.
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Yeah.
Yep.
Agreed with both of youse. No kids tried as adults.
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And so often, there are adults tried as kids - see Rapist Brock Turner, etc.
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The equivocation really doesn’t do anybody any good. Your comparison suggests that Brock Turner was treated as a child because “he got away with it” and in general children should be able to “get away with it” because of their age.
Brock Turner was old enough to know better-- and kids aren’t. The technicalities are best left up to developmental psychologists.
You misunderstand. The reason the judge gave for the (obscenely) lenient sentence for Turner was that he “has a bright future ahead of him.” My point being that when a 15 y.o. Black child commits a relatively minor offense, they get charged —and tried as an adult; meanwhile, the judge in Turner’s trial sentenced him as a child, even though he wasn’t. That difference represents both overt and systemic racism.
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Kids almost by definition have long and bright futures ahead of them. The real question is whether a kids brain, in comparison to adults brain is developed enough to understand and evaluate future risk.
If one puts aside the interesting question of whether adolescence extends to age twenty-five, well past the legal definition of juvenile, the research still should cast serious doubt on the practice of charging literal children as “adults”.
