This past week, two people were charged with conspiracy to commit murder. The weaponry to be used against their intended targets included a knife and gun; the gun was a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun and the knife was 3.25 inches.
We hear about murder plots every day. The shocking part of this incident is that the boys are fifth grade elementary school students, ages ten and eleven. Their primary victim was a girl–a fellow student whom they both dated previously but they claim made fun of and annoyed them–and they plotted against six other students they intended to lure away from school one by one to kill. One brother intended to use the knife while the other stood guard with the gun.
The gun belonged to one suspect’s older brother’s late grandfather and had been stolen when the brother visited the grandfather’s home. He is also a juvenile.
So let’s look at the story in detail for a minute. Fifth grade students dating? They shouldn’t even be looking at each other. Then after experiencing two breakups, the boys think about murder, while the girl entertains her friends with derogatory stories about the failed relationships. Worse, these young men are under the impression that the best way to handle other persons’ shortcomings is to kill them.
This is the generation we should worry about because they don’t seem to know how to tackle anything that does not provide gratification or instantaneous results. Bottle-fed on ego overstuffing ads and commercials, brainwashed by the concepts of manufactured perfection and entitlement, and visually bombarded by the constant stimulation of instant messaging, thanks to youngsters like this pair we are engaged in a fight against a type of prejudice and gang ethic nobody could have imagined twenty years ago. These young people may grow up to be spin-off radicals that make the Taliban look like a poker night social party. If you worry about bullying now, wait until the school system collapses completely under the weight of a student body out of control.
If somebody annoys you, kill them? What would they do to a teacher who gave them a “C” in social studies?
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 