8-year-old intentionally kills grandmother

Such a sad an unfortunate incident. Also ironic this happened in a town called Slaughter:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/25/us/louisiana-boy-kills-grandmother/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

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So many questions. How did he have access to the gun? Who did it belong to? Why was he playing an age-restricted video game? Why was nobody watching him?

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Scary that he isn't going to face charges. I imagine he'll be charged after he turns ten, though.

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"Why was he playing an age-restricted video game?"

You'll be surprised how many kids there ar playing these age-restricted video games. Parents/guardians will mindlessly buy them for their kids.

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Millie --- if that's true, I think we need to start holding parents legally responsible for their negligence.

So many people are having babies and then not raising them. It's disgusting.

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"The parents should be arrested here. The kid should be in mandatory therapy if not juvie. It's disgusting that this should happen."

From my understanding of the article, the grandmother was raising the kid, not the parents. The kid is now with his parents.

If the grandmother was legally responsible for the kid, the parents can't be arrested (as much as we'd like to place blame on an adult here). Unless they owned the gun or there is some connection between the parents and the gun. Right now, there are so many unanswered questions.

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Updated On: 8/25/13 at 10:36 AM

If the grandmother was raising the kid, and she allowed him to play an age-restricted video game, then she is partially responsible for her own death. It's an extreme case, but that's the reason for the restrictions. These games do influence the lives of the people who play them.

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It's up to the parents or guardians to take these age restrictions seriously. It's up to them to take parenting seriously, too.

The players come with built-in blocks for minors. But parents/guardians have to set the machines up for it first, and make sure that the only way a game can be played is if it has an age-appropriate rating. If they can't figure it out, they need to find someone to set it up for them.

Again, you have to take it seriously, though. If you're not willing to do what it takes, then don't buy the machine. Better yet, don't have (or raise) a kid.

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I started working for Blockbuster Video a few months before I turned 15. One of the things I remember being that young and working there was that I would have to tell kids older than myself that they couldn't rent certain things like movies or video games rated "M" (or whatever the rating was). Those first few years at the store, I got cursed out constantly by older teenagers who didn't want some kid telling them what they could or couldn't do and they were mortified when they had to have their parent come in and make a note to their account saying their child could rent whatever game they wanted.

And I can tell you that 10 out of 10 parents did that. I don't think I ever had one parent say that their child couldn't rent certain games in the ten years I was with that company. I'm talking the 8 year olds who would ride their bikes to the store on the weekends to rent Grand Theft Auto and because their parents said they were allowed to rent any video game, it was my job to hand it over to them.

When I was a kid, the general rule in my house was that I could watch pretty much anything ("besides porn", was the joke my Dad always made which made me cringe when I was 10 years old) because my parents knew that with movies, I was a film/horror geek even at 7 years old and I could handle the adult stuff. And if I couldn't, then my parents would sit me down and talk about what I saw and we'd discuss it. I knew the difference between right and wrong and what was acceptable to say in a movie as opposed to saying in real life. And when I was 8 and saw RUTHLESS PEOPLE for the first time, I wanted to cuss out people just like Bette Midler - God, I loved her in that. But I knew that I couldn't. My parents took a very active interest in letting me do and watch what I wanted but at the same time making sure that I really understood it.

And that's what's missing here. I know that in my case, I'm one of the exceptions. Because out of all of those parents who came in the store and blindly said "Yeah, give him whatever he wants", I could tell it was just to let the kid do what he wanted and get him/her off their backs for a while. I'm not saying that all kids who play violent video games are going to shoot their grandmothers in the head because that would be ridiculous. But I am saying that parents/guardians not taking an active role in what their children are watching or playing, does more harm to the child than whatever type of media they might be exposed to.

It's not unusual still for older men in the old south to take 8-yr old boys on hunting trips although I'm not suggesting that's how the kid acquired the weapon and training. By the time I was 11 I had earned a Rifle and Shotgun Shooting merit badge in the BSA because my dad had taught me how to handle one of his rifles and shoot properly at a somewhat younger age.

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In retrospect there were better lessons that I could have been taught at such a tender age. Times have changed.

It's really sad that the grandma lost her life to an armed grandchild and that we could have a real-life-Dexter-in-the-making. I hope the kid gets plenty of counseling because he'll have to deal with gunning down his caregiver for a lifetime.

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The truth is: some video games DO affect SOME people. This is why youngun's aren't suppose to play them.


and while, yes, much of the time, you can trace the problems to a lack of parenting, it is not always the case. I know a family that raised two boys. One boy turned to drugs pretty early and was trouble from the time he was about 13. The other one, never a problem in any way. BTW, the troubled kid was a genius...no exaggeration.

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Exactly Namo! What does Jesse Jackson have to say? WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?