The circumstances are different here. IN this case, the child had a .22, with which he shot his grandfather and his companion. He then took his grandfather's squad car, his pistol, shotgun, and flack jacket, and went on to the school with those. Columbine had kids stockpiling, this guy just took his plinker and capped his grandy.
edit: Milkshake is right, everything is not hard at 15. It's an artificial, uneeded 'hardness' fostered by the current way of thinking. Go back to the days of apprentice at 15. Make these kids feel needed and useful, not just dead weight.
This has been on the radio all day. At least it bumped Terry Shivo off the coverage. :D
Well CBC Newsworld covered it as the first story for the National, so it has gained some recognition over Terry Shiavo (though they still had a story about her as well).
And Kas is correct, this seems more like a rather unplanned/unthought out shooting while the Columbine was more thoughtout/planned.
As for life being 'hard', Kas and milkshake are right, it depends on what your definition of hard is. Life is sometime difficult or frustrating, even unfair, but our lives aren't really hard compaired to those of a lot of other people in the world.
What I think Erin was meaning to say is that every thing SEEMS hard at 15.
Every 15 year old who gets dumped or never gets asked out, cant get a job, isn't popular etc, thinks their life is the hardest one out there EVER. Over 50% of teenagers today run around thinking this way, while the rest know it's worse than that by experiance or just because their not wearing blinders when it comes to other peoples problems.
In the case of the boy at Red Lake, I think he just snapped. The Columbine boys didn't see other people as humans with value and saw violence as a way to fame.
And unfortunatly, our entire culture seems to revolve around making children feel great. Thus, when they find out that they are not, as they had been told, the KING OF ALL TEH WORLLD!, there is a deep low many fall into.
That's what I'm saying, "EVERYTHING" is hard when you're 15. I guess cynicism is harder to see when you're typing. It's almost embarrassing when I look around at my peers and see kids who are going "Oh LOOK! I'm a goth!" "Oh LOOK! I'm a skateboarder!" "Oh LOOK! I hate the world and you're not gonna make me do anything!" It makes me stop and shake my head but what these people don't realize is in 10 years when they're 25 and supporting themselves.. It's going to be a hell of a lot harder. It's just sad that some of them don't look that far ahead.
Honestly.. I have a feeling the boy in Minnesota did just snap. He wasn't throwing a temper tantrum or a hissy fit, but had slipped into pure insanity.
Now I'm going to go hide in the corner, look young and unruly, then spit on everyone's shoe and threaten to blow TRF up because milkshake is mean and he never asked me out. :( :( :( :( :(
Amen, brother. Erin, I doubt that most of these goths/skaters/other angsty teens are going to be supporting themselves at twenty-five. More likely, they'll just continue to live with their parents until (if it even happens) they finally come to some point that makes them rethink their lives.
I really believe that society has built up children just to break them. I suppose that's where good intentions get you.
