Holding Parents Accountable When Their Children Kill

Lloyd Lofthouse

Too many in the United States have an obsession with violence. Not surprising when we consider how many violent video games there are and how violent many TV series and movies there are. Then there’s the fact that firearms are too easy to get in the US.

Diane Ravitch's blog

This very important story appeared in the Washington Post.

She had seen her grandson’s red, spiral-bound notebook before that night, but now, as Catherine O’Connor sifted through its pages for the first time, what she read astonished her.

“School Shootings,” Joshua O’Connor had titled the first page, above a reconstruction of the Columbine High School massacre that left 13 people dead. In the pages that followed, Joshua, who’d just turned 18, described a detailed plan to carry out his own massacre: the shotguns, pistols, assault rifle and ammunition he would buy and the bombs he would build; the doors he would zip-tie “so bitches can’t escape”; the spot by the bleachers where he would set off the first explosion; the route he would take on his killing spree; the moment, when it was over, that he would end his own life.

“I Need to make this shooting/ bombing… infamous,” he…

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Responses to “Holding Parents Accountable When Their Children Kill”

  1. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    These are thoughts that I read on your website, that I have actually also already crafted in my mind. I am also of the opinion that parents should be held accountable, no matter how old children are. It’s all part of education, and it will be passed down from each of us to the next generations. Not just one kid, but the future of societies.

    Reply
    1. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
      Lloyd Lofthouse

      I don’t think parents should be held accountable no matter what the child’s age is. At 18, the parents have no more control because the law sees their children as adults. But, I think parents should be held accountable up to the child’s 18th birthday. Now, if the laws were changed so statutory children (physical mature enough to have children of their own) were not free until they brain finishes developing into the mature brain we keep for the rest of our lives unless we destroy it with poor lifestyle choices, alcohol and drugs,, then parents have to have the law on their site regarding corporal punishment and even having their children locked up if they are defiant.

      Once the brain reaches it’s adolescent stage of development between about 12 to 25, those statutory children are a lot harder to control. Research shows that the adolescent brain is wired to be rebellious and careless. If we want to hold parents accountable for that age group, the parents might need the power of life and death and request the children be executed if they do not obey. Back a couple of centuries and that was the case. Difficult and dangerous children were often murdered by their own parents. That is called Filicide.

      “Flicide has existed since the dawn of mankind. In ancient Greco-Roman times, a father was allowed to kill his own child without legal repercussions.”

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2922347/

      Reply

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