<p>I saw lots of pictures on the sites that I visited and he is pretty unambiguously white.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t discussed as a potential racially motivated crime, the way the OK shooting was. That is my point. As poetsheart said above, people tend to assess each incident individually when it is perpetrated by a white offender, whereas when it is “black on white” it is an indictment of an entire group of people.</p>
<p>It is a totally different situation in that, praise be, no one was killed or shot all thanks to ms. Tuff. You can’t attribute motive to a crime that did not happen. I also don’t think either the Oklahoma or Florida shootings were racially motivated, though.</p>
<p>@sally305
I think from the picture of the suspect in Georgia it is pretty clear that it was a white person.
This was described as a potential school shooting. There was no mention of the race of the kids since there was nothing to indicate it was racially motivated. No different than the CT shooting or the Virginia shootings. The focus was that this guy was crazy, admittedly off his meds, needs to go to a mental hospital etc. There was nothing about him tweeting about killing kids of a particular race.</p>
<p>That may be true, collegedad, but there was no evidence that the two kids on the school bus were racially motivated when they beat up a white child. No tweets, nothing. Yet certain media outlets played that up incessantly as a racially motivated crime. If I saw that video once I must have seen it 15 times. Only later on other sources did I see that it was a personal grudge the 2 black kids had against the victim, and nothing to do with race.</p>
<p>I am not disagreeing. There just was not the same instantaneous jumping to conclusions as there was in the OK case.</p>
<p>Anyway, enough about that…when are we going to address the issues of young males, of any race, with either family or mental health problems, having access to guns and using them? The one thing we know in virtually every case is that the perpetrator is almost always male.</p>
<p>I asked that question earlier, Sally. I would love to hear others’ thoughts on that.</p>
<p>@hayden. I was replying to the comment about the GA school. I don’t know about the school bus one.</p>
<p>zm: interesting in light of the other thread running about boys in school…I imagine you have been struck by the connection as well.</p>
<p>Yes I have. I think there is a connection between how boys are dealt with in school and later criminal behavior. No answers, though.</p>
<p>@sally305 - If these kids wanted to do this and didn’t have access to a gun, a $10 baseball bat could have also been used to kill him. I agree that this country needs to get serious about mental health issues and why there is such a blatant disregard for life. But I disagree that if they didn’t have access to guns everything would be better.</p>
<p>[Burke</a> Burnett, Texas Gay Assault Victim, Speaks Out On Alleged Attackers (GRAPHIC VIDEO)](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Burke Burnett, Texas Gay Assault Victim, Speaks Out On Alleged Attackers (GRAPHIC VIDEO) | HuffPost Voices)</p>
<p>No gun was used, just a knife, a broken beer bottle and a fire. Terrible.</p>
<p>Really? Christopher Lane, a college athlete, was jogging past the house the young men were in. You really think they could have caught up with him and killed him with a baseball bat?</p>
<p>It is completely disingenuous to claim that bats, knives, hammers, etc. can inflict the same amount of harm to INNOCENT PEOPLE as guns do.</p>
<p>^^^^^ agree.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>When white males commit crimes it is rarely reported that they in some way represent white male culture. An example is coverage of rioting…</p>
<p>@sally305.<br>
Yes, really.
You have your facts wrong.
They shot him in the back as they drove up to him.
If they didn’t have a gun, they could have hit him with the car knocked him down and then beaten him to death.
Or they could have taken a baseball bat and bashed his head in as they drove by him the way kids used to destroy mailboxes.</p>
<p>It is not disingenuous to claim that blaming the tool of violence (a gun, a knife, a baseball bat) makes no sense at all. If these kids had their mind set on killing someone because they were bored there were plenty of ways they could do that.</p>
<p>Connecticut has spent millions $$$ without figuring out what motivated Adam Lanza to kill his mother and 21 first-graders. I suspect it will be the same with the Oklahoma trio.</p>
<p>Whatever, collegedad. If they had wanted to commit the crime undetected, your alternative methods would make no sense. Nor would they have the likelihood of “success” that shooting him did. And a fast, fit runner who heard a car coming up behind him would likely respond instinctively by jumping out of the way.</p>
<p>@newhope33. Insane people do insane things. Bundy, Manson, Jim Jones, and so on and so on.</p>
<p>And here is the latest. An 88 year old WWII vet beaten to death. Insane.</p>
<p>[WWII</a> vet, beaten by teens outside Eagles Lodge, dies | Spokane/E. WA - KXLY.com](<a href=“http://www.kxly.com/news/spokane-news/elderly-man-dies-after-being-attacked-outside-ice-arena/-/101214/21574858/-/9flm7iz/-/index.html]WWII”>http://www.kxly.com/news/spokane-news/elderly-man-dies-after-being-attacked-outside-ice-arena/-/101214/21574858/-/9flm7iz/-/index.html)</p>
<p>@sally305. </p>
<p>You are ascribing logic and clear thinking to the actions of people who are insane and wanted to kill someone for fun. That makes no sense.
I doubt they thought their plan through about committing their crime undetected since they were caught very quickly.</p>
<p>I’m perfectly OK with requiring registration of baseball bats and knives if that will reduce the murder rate. Of course, nobody thinks that it would–it’s just the same nonsensical argument that’s always made.</p>
<p>But hey, if we can refrain from knee-jerk blame on absentee fathers, etc., perhaps we can also refrain from knee-jerk blame on access to guns. Maybe this was a registered gun and the kid was a member of the junior NRA.</p>