I'm a voracious reader. I also like police procedurals on TV. The latter is a byproduct of both of my parents being avid readers, and the latter is because of my late father, who, despite being a cop, still loved to watch his occupation badly portrayed on television.
Don't ask me why.
Those two led me to read a work titled "Inside the Criminal Mind" by Stanton Samenow. Samenow argues that criminality isn't the byproduct of poverty, video games, television, or any of the typical bugaboos given. Instead, he argues there's a personality type that is the criminal personality, which manifests in some people. It leads to errors in thinking that routinely lead to problems in the criminal's life.
This is why some kids in a family have a life of incarceration, and others become successful, law-abiding people.
This is what went through my mind when I came across this story of an 11-year-old boy murdering his father. The media has already latched onto it as a problem of gun culture, though.
A tragic incident took place in the Duncannon Borough of Pennsylvania where an 11 year old boy fatally shot his father after the latter took away his Nintendo Switch gaming console. The incident took place on the birthday of the minor and has raised alarming questions over the availability of guns in every household in the United States of America and the level of impulsiveness exhibited in kids in these countries. The deceased was identified as Douglas Dietz is a 42 year-old man who was discovered in his bedroom shortly after midnight.
What is the Incident
According to the police and court documents, the boy, Clayton Dietz had a key for his father’s gun safe. Upset that his father had called bedtime on him and the gaming console had been taken away, he retrieved the weapon, loaded it and shot his father in the head. Officers at the scene said Clayton acknowledged the act, reportedly telling his mom, “I killed Daddy.” Such an incident reflects how easy access to guns and poor judgment can lead to deadly consequences.
Childhood Impulsivity & Access to Firearms
Studies have also shown that when children display impulsive behaviour along with the availability of guns, there is a potential for domestic shooting incidents that can result in fatalities. The Center for Disease Control has recently noted that firearms have become the number one cause of death for children and adolescents in the US with deaths reaching 4,000 every year. In homes where gun storage can lead to accidents, children typically have access to deadly weapons before they develop enough understanding of their consequences, as observed in the Pennsylvania shooting incident.
...Gun Culture in the US & Gaps in Policy
This incident also sheds light on some issues in American gun culture. While some countries, such as Switzerland, possess high rates of gun ownership but adhere to proper training and storage regulations, America boasts easy access to firearms with little oversight in some states. Pennsylvania in particular had very lax policies when it came to storing and dispelling firearms throughout the house, which led to this sad incident. Currently, there are more than 393 million civilian-owned firearms in America, which exceeds the number of its inhabitants.
Now, there's no doubt that children can be impulsive. They do stupid things all the time, which is why we don't let them make life-altering decisions, as a general rule.
However, even the most impulsive people on the planet know that murder is wrong. Killing someone is rarely an act of impulsivity all on its own. At most, it's an act of rage, but this wasn't someone just losing it. Those murders tend to be violent, brutal, and messy.
This is a kid who was told "no," went and got a key to the gun safe, which I doubt he had just sitting in his pocket, opened the safe, got the firearm, carried it to where his father was, and used it.
That suggests to me that he was thinking clearly enough.
See, the media here wants to connect this to gun culture, but an 11-year-old attacking his unarmed father with almost any weapon could kill him. His father was likely unaware his life was in danger or that his son intended to kill him. He was vulnerable.
And this kid wasn't exactly a good kid, no matter what people might try to claim.
People don't generally just jump into the criminal pool with murder. It starts somewhere else, and what we see here suggests that's also the case. The problem, as Samenow notes, is that the criminal mind knows how to be charming with friends and family, so that everyone sees them as the good kid. It's likely why so many violent offenders get shot by police, only for the families to claim he was a good boy. They actually believe it, because Junior never lets them see the bad side.
Guns aren't necessary for the violent to hurt the innocent. They can do that well enough as it is, which we can see from our "non-gun" homicide rate.
What guns are necessary for is allowing the innocent to even the odds, be it against criminals or a tyrannical government.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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