This is in response to the June 1 editorial about punishment of the 13-year-old Lake Worth, Fla., boy who shot and killed his teacher. The piece was a valuable lesson, not in good journalism or useful solutions, but in a deeply rooted and serious problem in our society. While grasping at straws to try to explain this tragedy, the author makes the assertion that the grandfather of the boy is at fault.
The grandfather, you will recall, is the owner of the stolen gun that was used to commit this murder.
We seek to find explanations, not for prevention of future incidents but to assign blame. Why is it that someone other than the “very intelligent teenager,” whose ability to shoot a gun was proven by the deadly accuracy of his one shot, is to blame?
In all likelihood, this model student simply viewed the teacher who had sent him home (thus labeling him as a behavioral problem and ruining his perfect attendance record) as being in the way of his perfect academic goal, and chose to respond to that perceived threat in a gruesome fashion.
Would the teenager’s mother be at fault had he used a kitchen knife?
Who would be negligent if he would have stolen a car and run the teacher down in the parking lot?
Where would we place the blame had he taken a hammer from his father’s toolbox and beaten the teacher with it?
Regardless of the implement used, the result is the same. The victim’s life is over because another person deliberately killed him.
The problem this editorial exposes, and what may eventually prove to be the single greatest contribution to the downfall of America, is that people refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, seeking instead to blame someone else.
