But these are not children, and they were not just handed a gun. They went out and acquired one.
That is what astounds me. How one can come into possession of a gun completely without understanding that it is dangerous. How fundamentally the worlds I and they live in must be for that to happen.
Oh, now that I write it out like that, I've definitely been on the other side of that astoundment before, for lacking 'common sense'. Ain't that just the way.
That's because people in general are good. They don't understand that there is a small fraction of humanity that would happily erase their digital lives given half a chance because they themselves can not even conceive of someone doing a thing like that.
The fact that we all can is a professional deformation, it is not normal. I lived in a place where the doors had no locks. Nobody could imagine anybody stealing from someone else's house. And so it just didn't happen. When buying the house there is the moment where the keys are transferred. The sellers somewhat sheepishly announced they didn't have any. The lawyer handling the transaction asked if they had lost their keys and if they did that they should pay for replacing the locks. Then it turned out they never had any locks in the first place and that this was pretty much the norm there.
That distrust that we call common sense is where we go wrong, the fact that we've connected the whole world means that these little assholes now have access to everything and everybody and there isn't even a good way to figure out who they are and how to punish them unless they are inept at hiding their traces.
When I was growing up, we did not have a key to lock our house. I was a "latch key kid", both parents worked, but I never had a key. I remember meeting someone who locked their front door as a matter of course, and thinking that was so curious.
What country was this? I've heard of leaving house unlocked but never no locks at all
Northern Canada.