On 9/5/2013 1:00 PM, nestork wrote:


Home owner shoots, kills intruder with shotgun


I think there's a 75 percent chance the homeowner had the shotgun.


Or, "I saw a man in the distance with a pair of binoculars."

The biggest pain in reading questions posed by people is that if
something is obvious to them, they presume it's obvious to everyone else
as well. We often have to figure out from the context of the question
whether "bathroom tile" means wall tiles or floor tiles. It doesn't
occur to people that they need to specify things like that because it's
blindingly obvious to them what they're referring to and so they see no
need to state the obvious.

I know that this isn't going to be a popular comment, but I think it's a
tragedy that someone only 20 years old got shot and killed. The kid was
up to no good with breaking into people's homes and hijacking cars, but
still, it would have been better for all concerned if the homeowner
phoned the police and they came and arrested the intruder and he ended
up going to jail for two years where he took a welding course and ended
up getting a job with a local farm equipment manufacturer and never
committed another crime in his life. I know it's naive to think that
things would always work out for the better that way, but it's a better
ending for all concerned if it did.

Kids brains aren't fully developed until they're fully mature, and while
most 20 year old women are fully mature, many 20 year old men aren't.
Their brains are still developing, and they don't make rational
decisions like they would at age 25 or 30. Unless this kid was breaking
into homes to feed a drug habit, often the reason why people commit
crime is that they want (but don't actually need) money, and what's
important to immature men is their "rep" or "street cred" amongst their
friends, and the thrill of doing something dangerious. So, while they
could go back and live with their parents, that would be their last
choice as long as they could support themselves by selling drugs or
selling stolen stuff. Truth is that what lots of young kids like that
really need is a few years in jail to protect them from themselves until
they get mature enough to start thinking straight. Then, they become no
different than the rest of us.

Yeah, I know, people are going to bark at me for having such a wuss
opinion about it, but it's true. In 5 years time, that criminal kid
could have been a totally different person. I saw that myself when I
was growing up and saw that the "crazy people" I knew in high school
started to change between the ages of 17 to 23. People that I believed
were headed for either prison or an early grave ended up getting jobs,
getting married, having a kid, saving for a house and I never heard much
about them any more.


Perhaps if young offenders were marched through the morgue and forced to
look at the body of the 20 year old home invader having his body cut
up and internal organs and brain dug out, the young offenders may be
frightened enough to change their ways and the 20 year old home invader
would, in death, be doing a public service. Youngsters should be taught
that life is not a video game, there's no reset button. O_o

TDD