[user104658]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Yep which is pretty normal behaviour for kids of that age but the vast majority wouldn't have easy access to guns

I don't know that it's necessarily that simple though, I think it would be a gross representation of normal psychology to suggest that this was just "normal kid stuff" but he happened to have access to a gun. I mean, any kid anywhere in the world has "access to" planks of wood / bricks / rocks which they could bash each other over the head with, sharp pieces of wood or metal that they could stab each other with, and cause serious injury or death in a rage during all sorts of "normal kid disputes" but they... well... they generally don't.

I'm not for a minute saying that it's right that these kids in America have access to firearms, of course it's not, and these lethal weapons being at hand certainly ups the incidence of really horrible outcomes like this. But the motivation behind it is extremely violent and not at all even close to being a normal "child tantrum". Not at 5 years old... and definitely not at 11.

That said, I agree with the point that children and adolescents don't have a full concept of mortality and for that reason it seems questionable for him to be tried as an adult / as it being a premiditated killing. There's a reason that non-adults aren't generally tried as adults... and I don't really understand the logic of making exceptions to that just because the crime was a particularly bad one. If anything, the worse the crime, the MORE likely it becomes that the child didn't understand the consequences of their actions.