L.O.G. 189 The Blame Game

Okay, Greg. I think this is going to be, as we’re recording this, probably the last podcast of the year. So we had a good year. It covered a lot of different stuff. But for today's show, we're talking about something that you and I have been discussing for a while that we're seeing a little bit more of when it comes to some of these different criminal cases, especially the school shootings or juvenile-involved type shootings like that, where they're starting to sort of go after the parents and holding other people responsible.

We're seeing that in Oxford, Michigan, and then now that one from over the summer of Highland Park, Illinois, where they're going after his dad for signing for his Firearms ID card. So we're seeing this and we've discussed it. We understand people wanting to go after everyone who's responsible for these events, and that's a part of the conversation today.

Part of it too is you are on a little bit of, I would say, shaky ground legally in some of these situations. Maybe not shaky ground, but some of it's a little unprecedented. Some of it's going to set precedent, which is important, I think. So we want to talk about all this stuff, and it actually has to do with one of our listeners who actually reached out and asked about charging juveniles as an adult for certain offenses, which there's a history of that.

Actually, he pointed out a specific case called Roper v. Simmons. If you're listening, I'll throw in a little link to this website called Oyez (spelled O-Y-E-Z). It's actually one of the best Supreme Court case websites you can go to. You can search it. It's awesome. It links to other cases and what it means. You can read or listen to the opinions. It's really, really cool how they have it set up. So whoever did that, they did an amazing job.

And even the name, Oyez, Oyez!

Exactly. It's wonderful. It's really cool. But basically with that specific case, it was Guy Christopher Simmons sentenced to death in 1993 when he was only 17. So a death sentence at 17 years old. A whole bunch of appeals came from that, and then that went all the way through 2002. His appeal was rejected, but then the Missouri Supreme Court did a stay of execution because the U.S. Supreme Court was deciding what was the case called Atkins v. Virginia that dealt with someone who, the execution of someone who's mentally disabled.

Basically, for that case, the Supreme Court said, "Well, that amounts to cruel and unusual punishment," and they said it amounted to that because of America's shifting view of that, where no longer it wouldn't be popular in opinion in America to execute someone who is mentally challenged. It would, under the Eighth and 14th Amendments, amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Because of that, then they did the same thing with Simmons's execution.

Basically, the government argued allowing a state court to overturn the Supreme Court decision by looking at evolving standards would be dangerous. But the Supreme Court said, "No, these things change over time." So that's an interesting part of all these cases. A lot of them have to do with the 14th Amendment typically. But the idea for this one is, "Does the execution of minors violate the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment found in the Eighth Amendment and applied to the states through the 14th Amendment?" And the Supreme Court said yes. So executing a minor would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

I just want to mention those cases because that's sort of where it came from, or that has to do with it at least, involving a minor and how sometimes minors can be charged as adults for certain offenses. But in that case, if you're charged with this crime, you can't be executed as a minor because that would be cruel and unusual. So there's a lot of these nuances in there.

Now, what we're getting into with different school shootings and or different types of mass shooting attacks where it was involving a minor or someone who had a firearm, they're starting to hold responsible those around them that were contributing factors to these crimes, I guess you could call them. And that's what they're doing. So I want to just sort of set that up. It's a long way around, but we are going to talk about all that in here.

Yeah, yeah.

It started with one thing we wanted to cover, so I figured, right, because the listener reached out with that specific case, I did want to hit on that because we always do like to talk about things that people write to us about, ask us to discuss. So I thought it sort of fit with this discussion. So I'm going to lay all that out there, Greg, and I'll throw to you to sort of get started in the discussion.

So, let's go to the street first. I had an old orange Jeep and I loved my Jeep. But when we got high up in the Rocky Mountains and we had any long-term river crossing, my rotor would get wet. Then I'd have to pull over to the side of the road and dry off my rotor before we went up any higher, because I was always worried that a spark in the ignition wasn't going to take over, and the engine wasn't going to run, and then I was going to collapse at high altitude.

You threw me off at the beginning of that story just because you said, "we were getting high in the Rocky Mountains."

It always meant the same thing! You literally mean altitude. But the reason I'm saying that is that you were like a rotor. You were firing each time it came around, and all of those things seemed seemingly disparate or different, but they weren't; they're all the same thing. So let me go back to the beginning here and talk about Adam Lanza and Kip Kinkel.

Adam Lanza and Kip Kinkel both had parents who bought them the very guns that they ended up using to kill their parents. Now, go do your homework. Adam Lanza and Sandy Hook, and Kip Kinkel was Thurston High in Oregon. Thank you. In the day. So write those down, folks. We don't just regurgitate information out here for our gosh-darn complexion. We want you to look some of this [expletive] up and tie these, use the rotor and the spark analogy to tie these things together and get combustion—a combustion of an idea that you can pay for it in other things.

So the idea here is that, Brian, we're constantly looking to pay somebody off for this. So when it was Adam Lanza and when it was Kip Kinkel, what did we do with Lanza? "Oh my God, this is so horrible. We've got to tear down the building." We went the Stephen King route. "The building was evil; it's the school." Right? "We have to make sure that we get rid of the school and any semblance of it; that'll stop things."

Then we went with Kip Kinkel, and even when we went to Columbine, take a look at Columbine, the kids from Columbine were both arrested for a number of misdemeanor crimes within the two years and then the year before Columbine, all stress fractures were shown. But what did we want to do there? We wanted to say, "Hey, listen, we've got two kids here, and it's society, Brian, society, and it's video games and it's music." Do you see what I'm trying to say is that we're not good at leveraging blame or living blame to who really is responsible. We take a very subjective approach of how we do that. I'll blame the President for everything that's wrong in my life because it's his fault. But when it comes to something like this, it's like, "Well, look at all of these other people."

Exactly.

So, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Eric Harris's mom and Dylan Klebold's mom and dad both have speaking tours and books that they wrote, and all this other stuff. And this is a horrific incident. I'm not blaming anybody, trust me, I'm certainly not victim blaming her. But what I am saying is that finally we're getting to the point where somebody's going, "Well, wait a minute, what about him? He bought the gosh-darn thing that let the July 4th shooter actually get the guns and go out there, knowing full well that his kid had a mental problem and knowing full well that this kid was violent."

Then we take a look at the other one, we take a look at Oxford, and Brian, those parents are still trying to get bond. Why? Because what's their argument? The court says, "Hey, you fled. We're not going to give you a bond. You fled once, you'll flee again." And they said, "Wait a minute, we fled because we were afraid of who was going to kill us — all the people."

The legitimate fear, yeah.

"And you were publishing our photos, and so we didn't have a place to hide." So the "what" here is, when we take a look at all of those players, the stress fractures were screaming, "I need attention or I'm going to explode and blow up." And we could add Florida, we could add California, we could add so many others. And what has happened is there's been no measured response on who's to blame. First and foremost, it's the shooter. That's the blank. Yes. But those immediate people. Look at Uvalde, I want to stress that because everybody beats that, no pun intended. But take a look, that kid was so bad that parents were done with him. Even Granny was saying, "What am I supposed to do?" And the schools didn't want anything to do with him.

So we have to find, we're a culture that has to find somebody to point a finger at or a thing to point a finger at and say, "That's the thing. It's the gun, Brian. It's the media. It's the..."

Right. Yeah, it's the job. No, no, no. And that's, this is, this gets to the crux of the issue here is when is assigning blame and responsibility? So we want to hold people accountable. We're angry, upset. Everyone's feelings about it are completely valid. If that [expletive] doesn't piss you off and make you angry, then something's wrong with you. Right? So okay, got it. We're all pissed off and angry. But what happens? Well, we used to have something called the lynch mob. Okay, and it's not a good thing. In fact, the reason our justice system is the way it is is because that stuff continued for a while, and we said, "Well, let's round them up, let's hang them, and let's get it right here." Well, a lot of those people were innocent and had nothing to do with it. So yeah, it is. We get that emotion take over.

So we, and it's always, which I find interesting, is how we sort of as a society or individually place blame on it because one, I'm never going to do it on myself, right? It's never going to be my fault.

Exactly. That's why the group has to speak. If it was individual, it would be a monarchy tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah. So we don't want to do that, right? And then again, when something goes wrong, we look at all of these points and look at these contributing factors, and everyone sort of subjectively picks and chooses which one is more important, and we don't, and that, what the problem is, that it gets in the way of how we weigh each contributing factor, which one was more significant. But we don't start with where it actually is, right? So it's like you said, "The guns are the problem, the drugs are the problem, the police are the problem." It's like, no, this person made a decision. They made a choice. Yes, that was a [expletive] choice, right? And they should be held responsible for this. Everything else, yes, those may be things we need to improve on, those things we need to get better, but you don't get to take it out on those people. You have to take it out on the individual.

So this gets into now the legal side of it with specifically what we talked about, with are we going after the parents? Are the parents responsible? The parents are responsible, I mean, at a very basic level, legally, even the parents are responsible for the basic needs of a child. So if you're meeting your child's basic needs of food and clothing and shelter...

Well, no, no, no, no, no, I know what you mean. I'm just being a [expletive].

Yeah, but I'm saying from a legal standpoint, the state can't come and take away your kid if you're providing that. You could still be a shitty parent. You could still be a [expletive] [expletive], but you're providing the bare minimum for what a child needs. So legally, that's all you have to do. But now what these parents do? What are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to be policing parenting and how they should be parenting because a lot of them don't know how to do it or have a say?

Like you said, for some of these shooters and some of these kids that violently act out all the time, their parents gave up a long time ago. They don't know what to do. They don't have the mental capacity or the physical capacity to even deal with it. What are they supposed to do? So now they're responsible. Why are, the debate is interesting, it's so [expletive] subjective to me, and this screams of me, it's like if they have a really good attorney, then they're fine. I mean, not necessarily fine, but...

Which is a precedent we don't want to set. But let me throw this at you, there's somebody listening to us right now, and I want to make sure we just disabuse them of what we're not talking about. There are kids in Detroit and Philly and Seattle and L.A. and Chicago, Iraq, that are out on the streets every single night shooting at each other, shooting a 14-year-old, doing this, doing that. This is not that. That is when you allow the culture and the experience and the training and the mentoring and everything else to break down and proliferated area.

Yeah, exactly.

To the point where it's pre-apocalyptic in nature, and those kids don't have the sense not to be out shooting, and if we were there, one of them would take a shot at us for this podcast. You get what I'm trying to say? Okay, that's one thing. What we're talking about is the premeditated view of an individual that, "I'm going to take a gun and I'm going to impose my will on these people by shooting at them or killing them or threatening them or terrorizing them." Okay? Two completely different standards. So one set of rules cannot help or hope to address both. Do you see where I'm going there?

I think I think, no, no, and I would agree. I would look at it as, okay, if I'm going to treat it, because there's some people say, "How is this any different or how is that different or we're not paying attention?" But, yes, let's say it's both of these areas, it's cancer. But yes, there are different types of cancers, so you're not going to treat this type of cancer the same way you're going to treat that type.

You're exactly right. Exactly right. And Brian, people with diabetes know that their tooth care is important because if you don't take care of your teeth, your heartbeat goes. Well, if you haven't been trained that those two things are correlated, you're never going to know that, and you're not going to buy that toothbrush, or you're not going to floss. And people go that are listening, "What the [expletive] is he talking about?" Look, I always try to strip things down. One creates the next, and if you don't know the totality of the argument, Brian, then what you do is you still run around treating symptoms and you never really treat the causes. So tooth decay is a cause of heart disease, and it is a contributing factor to diabetes, and diabetes is a contributing factor.

So when we're talking about this, what are we talking about? We're talking about a jail. So what's a jail? A person's going to spend 90 days in jail. You can spend up to one day less than a year in a thing called a jail. What were jails designed for? Jails were the timeout chair of history. "You have exceeded your authority in this matter. You have fraudulently done something. You threw a punch at a nun." Whatever it is, you're going to jail. And what they want from that, Brian, they wanted it to be punitive to the point where you had a fine and cost and time in jail to give you what? To cool the blood down, to think, "This is not the path that I want to go on." Right.

Then the next thing was a prison. Anything a year or more, over a prison, you had to spend time. You certainly didn't want to be there. What was before that? Before that, it was the penitentiary. They wanted you to be penitent. They handed you a Bible. They wanted you to go in and pray on your knees for salvation. Brian, those don't work. You don't understand. So that's where I'm going with this is that, yeah, you are not going to take some kid off the streets of Chicago or some kid that ate in Ghashit (likely Ghaith, or a similar region) and tell them there's a better way than a gun. Why? Because we haven't offered them a better way.

They don't know a different way.

No. So the problem here is not them. The problem here is thrill killers, dynamic shooting situations. They try to change the terms all the time. The new thing: driving through a parade, shooting at a parade, shooting at a school. Why are they a thing? Because, look, I have only had a lack of attention my entire life that shaped my formative years, and negative attention is attention nonetheless, Brian, right? So I can feel powerful with a gun. If I'm a boy, it's an extension of my penis. If I'm a girl, that's an extension of my id and my ego. And guess what? It gives me instant [expletive] credibility when I walk into a room and go, "[expletive], it's on," and start capping rounds. That's the problem. So that's where it's the same in both environments.

Right, right. There's just the tool becomes a means of communication.

Yes, okay. That's a great way of saying it.

The weapon or the tool, in this case, is a means of communication, and violence is a language, obviously.

Exactly.

And so at that point of it, it's very similar. But to get back to sort of what, then how do you, how do we prosecute this? So who do we hold accountable for these things? There's a lot of accountability and shared accountability, and then we just sort of go, "Oh, this makes us feel better," like, "Look at their parents, look at them, or look at their teachers, or look at..." Well, they don't, we don't do that.

Well, we did, though. We did. When we had a shooter in Colorado, we said, "Hey, he fell through the cracks because we had this handy-dandy system of ones and zeros, Brian, that we added to a person." When they did, we did that in Florida too, didn't we? And we said, "Oh, well, the teachers failed because they didn't articulate these problems." Then we said, "Wait a minute, it wasn't the teachers, it was the problem. This base system of accounting." And then we said, "Why?" Because we're not sure who to point the finger of blame at.

I like what you said earlier. First of all, the person that's most culpable, the person that's most responsible, is the person that pulls the trigger. Now, in these two cases that you cited that'll be in the episode notes, in both of those cases, a parental figure actively took part in either the purchase of the firearm...

Or the purchase of the firearm, purchase of the ammunitions in Illinois over the summer. And then, previous last year, the Oxford, Michigan one, they both, the dad either purchased or helped them purchase. I think for the Highland Park one, he had to sign their, in Illinois, they had the Firearm Owner's ID card or something like that. If you're not a certain age, you have to get a parental signature. Same thing, Oxford's dad actually bought it as some. So yes.

So, but at the time, obviously, what do we talk about? Was there any intent behind what they did? Well, no, I mean, that's going to be the hard part, because not to support a terrorist act, the intent was to purchase a gun. Is it bad parenting? Yes. But not all bad parenting is illegal.

So what they're saying, Brian, what they'll say in these upcoming arguments, and let's call this right now, they're going to say that they knew or should have known that their action or the neglect of it, inaction, was going to lead to this trauma. And when we look at Kip Kinkel, Kip Kinkel stole a gun and had that gun at school. So the teachers called them out, the parents intervened and said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, listen, we don't, okay, why'd you steal? Oh, we'll buy your own gun, you don't need to steal a gun." Right? It was all leading to the close end of the funnel, Brian, the tight end of the wedge, where we knew or should have known that this was going to end in him killing himself or killing a bunch of others. And he ended up killing the parents and then going and killing, attempting to kill. Kip Kinkel is one of the good ones where the school saw it quickly enough, and the student center dean stopped it.

But the point is, the point is that if you get your kid a driver's license, your kid was out driving carelessly and recklessly and didn't follow the laws and stole a car and all that [expletive], but you still got it. Right? And in the back of your head, you're going, "Well, [expletive], somebody else's problem now." Brian, that is the type of thinking that we're addressing here. And in those instances, what else would those parents have thought when the kid says, "I need a gun"? What do you mean you need a gun? I mean, if your little insurgent came up to you tomorrow, "Hey, I think I need a gun." Wait a minute. Imagine that. They're being all, "Stop right there! Shut it down. What is going on here?"

No, but this goes back to it, and again, that's that maybe bad parenting, but does it fall under liability for "you knew or should have known"? And there's that question.

Yeah, yeah, because example...

This is going to, I think this is going to set the precedent for this. I think Oxford will.

I love the fact that they came in on the parade shooting, Brian, because it's so different in nature. But again, it's the same case in chief. It's, "We're charging a parent."

Well, this is, this part of the case is similar, and that's the point is, is it's not illegal to be a shitty parent, unless it meets certain criteria of child abuse and or neglect or whatever it is, right? And then you can be charged with that. But the idea is...

Fraudulently answered a document to get the gun, right?

Or, yeah, they didn't do anything illegal. One thing they did was illegal, and then it was a contributing factor to what happened. But does it fall under, there's obviously, they didn't have any intent, they didn't buy it thinking that they were going to go kill a bunch of people with it. Now, are we at the point societally where you can say "you knew or should have known"? And I think that's might be part of the argument here is, as a parent, it's no longer in 2023. You have to understand, you know that these, either we have a history of these things happening in the United States. This isn't a fluke. This isn't some random occurrence that happens.

You're exactly right.

So the idea is, is does it fall under "you knew or should have known"? Well, could they have, should they have anticipated that this could have turned out poorly? Well, I would say yes, but convincing a jury of that, you know, is a difference.

So let's take a different tack, though, Brian. Let me ask you this. Let's take a completely different tack. There's a, I'm going to depose you briefly. There's a place in the United States called Tornado Alley. Is that true or false?

Yes, true.

Okay. So, and it's so named because tornadoes frequent those areas and create havoc and destruction. Is that...

Yes, every year.

Okay. So would you agree that it's probably harder to get insurance in those areas and to build a home in those areas?

I would. I would have some other, I would assume my insurance premiums would be more given the fact that that's a common occurring natural disaster in that area. Yeah, I would.

And I would also agree probably, and I would stipulate it, I think, to the fact that unscrupulous people would be able to sell property there dirt cheap because it can't be used for much if you can't get insurance for it. But people got to live somewhere, right? So yeah, the standard...

There's going to be people that take advantage of it.

You're exactly right. The standard of homes also that are there are not going to be a complete luxury home. Sometimes maybe they're going to be a cheaper home that can be replaced. So why again, Greg, why do you come up with that? Because I'm back to trying to create a parallel in your brain for what we're talking about. Adam Lanza did not say, "Mom, I think I want to be a target shooter at the Olympics." Kip Kinkel didn't say, "Dad, I want to go hunting." These weapons that they bought and the rooms that they kept and the journals that they wrote, all would lead a reasonable person to believe that the egg had cracked and there was a fissure and [expletive] was sticking out of it. Just like when a dam breaks or a levee breaks, Brian, from heavy rains or a flood, we knew that this was the weak point, that this is where it was going to go.

So right now, if you've got a kid that's begging for the Red Ryder, "No, you'll put your eye out" for gosh-darn Christmas, you've got to intervene. You're the parent; you need to intervene and go, "No guns, Tommy, we're afraid you're going to kill us." I mean, those discussions aren't happening. Maybe this new litigation will cause us to get back to the table and have those discussions.

Well, it's those discussions happen in homes, and but those then obviously where these things don't happen. I mean, that's the point. I mean, so it goes back to like we always say, of course, parenting or mentoring, especially at that age, is the most important thing for that person, that community, and therefore our country. Right? But that, that, so the idea is again, goes back to these cases is what is the legal ground that they have and are we doing this arbitrarily because it makes us feel better, or is this going to actually, because it, it goes back to the kid in, a bad neighborhood, whatever, urban area in the United States, whether Chicago, Detroit, Philly, or something like that, who that's all they grow up. They grew up in a violent community where everything's around guns and drugs, and this is how it happens. Like they literally do not know, they don't know any better sometimes. Are they still responsible for the actions? Absolutely. Right? But that, but that's a different case.

So are we trying to, we don't go after those families when that happens, when a 16-year-old kid kills someone in Chicago over a carjacking, they don't try to go after their parents.

Right, right, right. And my thing is that when we have the street racing that gets out of control and goes into the crowd and kills somebody, we go after those folks. Those are responsible. Why? Because their actions are very careless or reckless. But we didn't go after the driver's dad.

Right, right.

Go after, so we go after the auto manufacturer, we go after the gun manufacturer, we don't go after that guy's driver's training teacher in high school. So what happens is we have to define as a society those persons that are closest to the caper and how the impact, you say it all the time, Brian, what does this fix? What will this address?

What problem does this solve? That's what I mean. If, okay, if Ethan Crumbley was in the [expletive] principal's office with the goddamn gun in his backpack right before killing a bunch of students, well, that's clearly. Are we going into that room on that day? Are we going after anybody? We need to because they knew more about that situation. I would argue, I could argue that they knew more about what was going on with Ethan Crumbley and that specific situation than his parents did, who they called on the phone, who were probably in the middle of a work day or doing something, "Oh, he's doing what? Yeah, no, he's fine, you can, yeah, no big deal." They're not seeing the picture. Right? And they could have made the call right there and had a different outcome simply searching his bag. Are we going after that? Are they going on trial? Are we going to sue the [expletive] out of the school and the school district? Are they going to have to pay out millions? Are we going to...

So your point speaks directly to your question that the viewer wrote in when they were talking Roper v. Simmons. So Roper v. Simmons, an older caper, 25 years probably now, to get together to kill a female. They abducted her from her home. They drove to a bridge, threw her off the bridge. One of the kids didn't show, they were still going felony murder for the kid that didn't show because he was at the planning. They all talked about the caper. Everybody was complex and implicit, so there was no question about the guilt. Now, why am I making a big point of that, Brian? Because it wasn't as if these kids, the Justice League or The Innocence Project came along and said, "Wait a minute, there was a false confession." Everybody agrees, including the victims, the witnesses, the suspects themselves, that they were guilty. The question was, can we convict somebody of a capital crime and then, even if they're a juvenile, execute them, which is the ultimate end of adjudication?

That's the ultimate punishment.

And the court, and we know SCOTUS, we know how the Supreme Court is going to rule. The court says, "Hey, look, kids are mixed up like a fart in a gosh-darn blender." So they're growing, and their brains are changing, and even one of the justices, if you ever read this book, Brian, the Oyez site is an incredible site because he'll add it in the notes, it's got all these different side comments that you can read. The idea here is that a lot of the justices look, and some of them used open-source information and intelligence, and said, "Look at all these articles on what decisions kids make poorly, and look how it's this age group of kids that make the worst decisions repeatedly."

So, to answer specifically the person that wrote you, my answer is kids can't make those type of decisions, and even though it looks as though they planned and they rehearsed and they carried it out, we still have to have a decision on age. So from a certain age, you're a minor, you think like a minor. That's why you can't drink, that's why you can't vote, all those things. So you shouldn't be killed. But I think an argument you brought up bears something talking about as well, because you said, and I quote SCOTUS on it, "The America's shifting view." Well, we all know that the Constitution is a living, breathing document, and certain things must be interpreted by each new team of humans in America. Why does that? So, because we didn't have aircraft, we didn't have...

Well, there's, there's people that are trying to argue that it's supposed to mean what it meant at the time, and then how does that apply today? Like, you have to say, you can't just say, "Oh, this is what it meant back then; they didn't have everything." So those arguments very quickly.

No, no, stop. So, the jury, we will not have electricity while deciding.

Yeah, exactly.

And you put it so succinctly and so beautifully, what we were supposed to do is understand the mindset and what was going on in the environment at the time, then understand the mindset in the environment now. So when they say "the American shifting view," they specifically meant on mental health, meaning diminished capacity.

Yep.

So I think there's two arguments there, one, just being a minor, you have diminished capacity. So I would, you argue that when you're putting a kid in prison for the rest of his life for a shootout in Chicago, it would be different if that kid was on the streets of, let's say, London or Frankfurt, where they don't have weapons all over the place, right? We have the severe problems with gang violence and armed robberies. They do have crimes, it's not gun crime, but plenty of crime. Yeah, I could see, I could take decades and I could say, "You suffered from PTSD in this environment. This is safety." And those capers are happening, Brian. Remember getting a lot of people on the street that were murderers and it said, right, you run them through the computer and it comes back and it said, "They're in the Hoco for homicide." And you go, "Homicide?" And, "What happened?" "I was found guilty." "Well, how long did you do?" "Six years, seven years." And you're like, "Holy [expletive], that's the price for homicide."

And I'll tell you why that's scary to you and me. You and I, within the last couple of weeks while we were traveling, and I'm not going to say where, we ran into somebody and we were talking about training for events like this, to be able to predict what was going to happen and stop it. And that person was bringing up Oxford and going, "Well, the training kind of worked because only this many people were killed." That person was wrong-minded because they were trying to think that less is more, and because there's only three that were killed, it's just, it's just an absolutely unacceptable standard.

And it is, and that can't be where you start. So we're not going to arrest our way out of it, we're not going to incarcerate our way out of it, and to further answer that minor, by killing that minor, you are not creating a standard where other minors go, "Well, I don't want to go to the electric chair."

That's never, that's not an argument.

Prison or any type of community, anything like this, it's not a deterrent. It never has been. I mean, maybe for some people who I don't know, but not for criminals, not for people. I mean, there's some people that, "Oh, I don't want to do that because it's a crime," but I don't think we're rising to those people who are thinking about that with murder, right? Not with recidivists and certainly not...

That's what I'm saying.

And, you know, it's, it's basic mathematical distribution on this. I mean, what is it, like 20% of criminals commit 80% of the crime? And then out of that 20%, 20% of them are the worst.

Out of those toys, exactly.

And so, so that goes to the thinking you said it earlier with intent. Look, people right now are getting let out of jail and having their cases expunged.

Sometimes, yes.

But I'm speaking specifically about marijuana. So now people are going, "Why was that ever a thing?" Look, it's not that it was ever a thing, it's that it was a thing.

I knew it was a thing!

Yes, and you still were hiding again and coming across. There's tons of things like that. There's tons of old, like, there'll be some old law from 150 years ago on the books about something small and obscure, and everyone goes, "Well, how is it like, look at it?" Because it never went through the process of getting changed because this situation didn't come up. Now that it came up, but like you said, no, the drug ones are a perfect example because everyone's going like, "Well, this is like, you know, there's non-violent people, they're just..." Okay, but at the time, this is what the law was. Now, if you want to change that better and they want to do better, right? If you want to change that now and you want to commute those sentences, that's fine. But that person is...

Shifting view.

It's exactly, it goes right back to what the Supreme Court says about a shifting view and how this is, which is good. It's what it's supposed to be, because we go, "Oh, hey, that was, that was kind of dumb. We kind of overreacted there. Maybe we should fix that." And then we also do, we also react with the shooting. Yeah, but we also are supposed to do the opposite where we go, "Hey, you know what? We weren't focused on the right thing. This is where we need to focus." Right? And so I don't know if this covers that, right, meaning of these, these parents. It's like it, to me, it, one, it doesn't, I don't believe in some sort of punitive action simply because it makes you feel better. I mean, that's, okay, great, it makes you feel better. It didn't change anything. It, that, what is this doing?

And what's religion?

Because, right, because it, this sets a precedent. Don't get me wrong, folks. Well, they come highly religious, but what I'm trying to say is the reason that sometimes we deem something to be, you know, "God doesn't like this, it's written in the Bible," this and that, is to correct or create order in social masses. And sometimes we look back and we go, "You know what, that wasn't the right plan. That wasn't the best thing." When we came to Roanoke, sometimes we knew we had germs, that's why we were trading the blankets. So what I'm saying, and my argument is that if you knew or should have known that your actions were illegal, immoral, unethical, and you did them anyway, you've got a problem. That's going to be the hurdle, I think, Brian, for these cases to go after the parents and the caregivers, because they're going to have to prove in court that you had ample opportunities to intervene, but there was ample demonstrations of intent, yet you did nothing but the flat-footed.

The issue then with this precedent though, if they, if they get convicted for whatever they're going to be charging them with, I can't remember they charged the dad with in the Highland Park one, but what can that? Okay, now we're hanging out, Greg, and you go, "Hey, let me see your Glock, Brian," and I go, "Oh, yeah, here you go," and then you go, "kill three people and then blow your brains out right in front of me." Like, am I, am I, how is that my fault? What, I was supposed to know you were going to do that? We were just hanging out here.

So much. Let's slow it down and let's open the Hoberman sphere and let's look inside the ball. If you knew or should have known that action, listen, in a test, you can't argue with somebody. And that's why with the kid, you've got to give that kid more time because kids make mistakes. That's why the court is looking at that and saying, "We're not going to put..." First of all, if we take a look at Ethan Crumbley, Crumbley thinks he knows he's guilty. He thinks he knows why he did what it was, but he's still a kid at the end of the day, and he needs some protection. He needs a bunch of lawyers and he needs a bunch of help. Killing him solves nothing and is going to solve nothing in the future. So therefore, we back up and we take a look at your example and we go, "Look, Flash the Bang was too tight. I go, 'Hey, hand me that gun,'" which I can't imagine any time that somebody would ask that, but there is a case where somebody did that and then I shot somebody else and then shot myself. Now, going back for it, the intent was demonstrated by me, it was never demonstrated by you. But in juvenile capers or minors, we would say contributing to the delinquency of a minor. So you handing that minor a gun, minor doing that act, would be illegal. But you handing it to a person that you never suspected had mental illness or anything else, that would just be a grim, horrible event. Do you get what I mean?

Yeah, no, I, I, it has to be a standard, and I think that's the big part. But I don't think that was, I understand that for the Ethan Crumbley case because he is a minor. Okay? But if the person isn't a minor, what if they're, but if, if the adult, well, and that's, you get what it's, like a good determining factor, it's, it's, you're then going to have to take a look and see if there are other contributing factors. But for your July 4th shooter, the question will arise with all of these, Brian, is that did I dupe somebody? Like the federal firearms laws are in place so bad people don't get guns. Do they work? No, it's more porous than our Southern border. But does it work for good people? Yeah, most laws, almost all laws work for people that follow the rules. But was the dad in Highland Park, was he putting his thumb on a scale to get his kid the gun to keep his kid quiet because he was tired of dealing with him? It did in the back of his mind somewhere, you go, "Man, this could turn out poorly." And if that occurred, Brian, I mean, we're talking about a bunch of this, but that's why we go to bench trials or jury trials. If that occurred, then it would be wrong because it's a form of fraud, isn't it? "I'm going to allow you to get like," parents think nothing of, an adult thinks nothing of kids standing outside of the local Kwik-E-Mart. He goes inside, buys the kid a six-pack and goes, "Hey, I was young once too." But the protracted chain of events that occurs after that, you are proximate cause and responsible for your actions there.

I'm looking forward to it because the Michigan courts recently said, "Hey, the place for this to happen is the Supreme Court after the trial. That's where we want your objections, that's where we want our challenges." I'm saying that we could do a lot of work up front by allowing society to understand that America's views have shifted. But let's not do a knee-jerk law, "All guns are bad, all front sights, painted black weapons all have to be frigid pink." That [expletive] just mucks up the system. That does nothing to answer the question, what are we trying to solve here?

And I love the Crumbley caper. I can't wait. I know that we both agree that that's going to be a very important case. That one, everything around it, not just the parents, but with what they're going to do at the school and the legal challenges here, like this is going to, if this is going to be the one that changes a lot of things, because the again, like you said, with policies and, well, we already know, yeah, with insurance companies are going to be out there, but it there for a number of reasons, because of simply the negligence, I think, on their part, from what we know of the case and what occurred, and what the school should have done, and then now they're looking at what the parents should have done. So this is going to set it going forward. It's just always, are we, what's the intent behind it? Is it to hold as many people accountable and responsible because it doesn't, or is it just to continue to place blame on more people?

Right, right. I think your point is so important. We've got to repeat that. Listen, if you're listening to this broadcast, what Brian means is, if you drown in a pool and the pool didn't have a fence, Brian is saying he wants to hold somebody responsible for future pools to have fences so more kids don't die. That's what we're talking about. I'm trying to say we've got to come off of this gosh-darn gun issue long enough to look at simple logic. Certain things are dangerous. So if we create a path to that thing and we move things out of the way, and we know that we're going to go into that danger knowingly, then we're guilty. And that might just be me. But if somebody else helps me boost into that window, if somebody drives me to the bank to rob it, they're guilty too. But that's not how we're going. We're going, like you said, with responsibility, finger-pointing, and I want to feel better at night because I know somebody went to jail for that. Look at Uvalde. What's that guy in People magazine that we were reading?

Yeah, I forget. Connie.

Oh, man. You're, you're great, buddy. Your way of thinking is really going to save lives at the end of the day. If what you adjudicated in Uvalde for those people, if what you sued for, if what you fired people for, if what you held them to their feet to the fire for, if it's not going to stop a future school shooting...

Right. Action, not prevented that one, then I'm suspect.

I'm mediating.

Because it should be if your goal is, "Hey, how do we prevent the next one from happening? Or how do we make sure this doesn't happen again?" And you look at all these things and you bring everything out into the clear light of day, I get that. But again, it doesn't feel like that in some of these cases. It certainly doesn't feel like that when it doesn't pass everyone. Yeah, it's like again, Uvalde is both a perfect example and a terrible example at the same time, because it's perfect because, you know, it's, it's, I, it's the police's fault. Right? What the [expletive]? Someone called 9-1-1 and people showed up and it's their fault. So we're there. What happened? Of course it is, probably why things didn't happen sooner was actually because there were so many people there that it actually makes it more difficult. But that, that's a separate, you know, sociological and psychological, but let's discuss...

But let's go back to that sociological discussion for a minute. On social media, how many times... Look, we're not involved, folks. We have nothing to do with executive and dignitary protection. Never have, never will. Okay? We do have mindset. We do have advanced critical thinking. We have human behavior and human performance, and we've got a lot of friends that have been in the industry for 40 years or more that are the experts at it. Okay? So when we see a scammer and we see all of this, Brian, do you remember that recent Hollywood assassination of, you know, I can't even with a straight face go on that you needed to carry an MP5 and have trained, a 500-pound bench presser. Those things don't happen. That's not it. So if you're going to talk to me about mitigation and about litigation, and you're going to talk to me about the future and the training, these these shows too. I tell you all the time, I watch that gosh-darn free hunting show and watching the guy with the appendix carry, Aimpoint sight, and he's got the backup because now he's got the true sight and the Aimpoint sight, and those two things together, if you do a fraction of the thing at seven yards and roll around on the ground, Brian, I love people, go train, go lift weights, go do all that. You're not moving the dial one way or the other. You're not changing the outcome. You're not making the world a safer place. The idea is you've got to fight these types of arguments. This is the type of discussion you need to have if you want to make the world safer for our kids.

And I'm not, it's again, it's another example of focusing on the wrong things. Like, yeah, and, and but it makes it, but in back to what I said, it certainly makes me feel like I'm more prepared. Yeah, just because it makes you feel right, it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. It's, well, it's just like the data science argument, we were talking about the other day, and how we all as humans are sort of in a little bit of a data scientist, how we look at things. Now, we just do it in a horrible, illogical manner. And one of the things is when you find, people find like, "Hey, we looked into this and it's kind of showing us something that's counterintuitive," I'm like, "You're probably onto something. That's probably the right way to do it." Because...

Slow down and stay there for a minute. Our intuitive way is often wrong.

Because that's just it. Well, here, I've got this thing, this is going to help me, and it's like, look, you may be well-intentioned and well-meaning and well-funded and well-researched, but it's not going to solve this problem right here.

Exactly. And so, but that's where I'm going with this, with this prosecution. What are we doing? My argument is this: all of your training has failed if I have to shoot you. I failed in all of my mitigation and all of my sense-making and problem-solving and everything else. There's the rare time that I'm going to have to shoot you where all of those things had to fail, and it's going to be so rare, it's going to be remarkable. Case in point: Titanic. This gosh-darn argument coming around because the Avatar movies out, would the kid have lived on the door, would he have died on the door, on the raft? Number one, you've got too much time on your hand. Okay? Number two, Brian, simple question: how many life vests were there on the Titanic? And how many, how many? They didn't have enough boats. You didn't have the vests and you didn't have the boats, yet that ship sailed. Then you're complicit. You knew or you should have known. You're part of the problem. And that's what we're doing now, Brian, is we're saying, "Yeah, but that's okay. We don't want to meet that standard, we want to meet this one." Why? Because it's dangling right in front of us, and kids died, and anytime kids died, look at Old Yeller, you know, we cry our asses off and we've got to do something about it. And don't continue to tell me that the violent films and movies, and look, even violent gosh-darn news broadcast, even the weather forecast, "Millions are left powerless." What we're doing is we're scaring the [expletive] out of people, and that's not helping you psychologically or sociologically, because now you're suspect of everybody. You've got to get out of your house. You've got to fight a good fight. This is something you need to be a Protestant for (likely a mispronunciation of "proactive" or "protagonist").

So, what do you think is going to be, just knowing what we know right now, the outcome of these cases? Let's say like that. You think probably the Oxford shooter, his parents' case, because I actually forgot what they're even charging them with.

So the parent, the parental influence and the neglect and allowing and all that stuff, they're going to be found guilty. The thing is that they're going to be found guilty for all the wrong reasons. They're just like the Highlander. It sounds like it, like ends justification here. The thing what they're going to do is they're going to say, "See, we told you we were going to be able to do it." Then over the next 11 years, I predict that we're going to have side cases and forward cases, and they're going to be in jail and out of jail, and somebody's finally going to come up with the answer, and SCOTUS is going to look at it and go, "That's legal. That follows what the constitutional guidelines were." But there's going to be a lot of missteps before that. So I like what the Michigan court said, "Hey, let's fight this out in court, then we'll pick up the pieces," because it's the most logical way to do that, because that's almost scientific in its approach.

It, it sounds like this is something that, that this case is going to be going for the next 10 years with appeals and going up to state Supreme Courts and maybe all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. I think it's going to be probably like you said, and I, I guess that's what they're trying to do, which, it that has to be done legally, right? We, I mean, meaning, meaning if we're going to go into this thing that are broken...

If we're going to go into this area, we have to create precedent.

What is the right way to do it? It's going to have to argue back and forth several times. It's going to have to get kicked down and then go back up, and then people, and from that we'll get whatever the answer is going forward. But that is certainly going to take some time. And I think the same thing with the Highland Park. And then there's going to be more cases after this, knowing, now people seeing that when it happens again, when something happens, it's going to continue. So there's going to be more cases on top of that. Some may go faster than others, some may be easier or less complex than others. Right? But I, I think, I, I just don't, if we're doing this just to make ourselves feel better, then it's for the wrong reason.

We're wrong. We're wrong. And I'll tell you this, remember the limo caper a couple of years ago, all those folks died in a limo, the fiery accident, the party bus thing? East Coast or something?

Yeah, yes.

When that comes down to it, this is what I want folks to start thinking. Critical thinking means comparative analysis to similar incidents. What happened is those people got along a long time with, if not getting their vehicles maintained, not having a stringent standard for driver training, not doing this. And guess what? All of those things led to a night that has impacted so many people and so many died. And millions, if not a billion dollars, were worth of court costs and finding. What Brian and I are telling you is if you take a look at likely outcomes, the most likely course of action will never turn around and bite you in the [expletive]. It's not anticipating the most dangerous course of action. So when you sit down and your kid is going, "Hey, where are you guys going Friday night?" Okay, you've got to think, "God, what do you got planned?" Right? You've got to do a little bit of that creative thinking, Brian. So when the kid comes to you and says, "Yeah, I'm thinking about that Ruger nine-millimeter might be a great target pistol." "Well, you know what, I've got an air gun here that you can do with a Crossman BB gun at a target inside the house, and it's much cheaper and you can't kill Billy down the street with it." Right? You get where I'm going?

Yeah.

Brian, that's all critical thinking. That's all using a metric design. Not just age, because age can be, some person can be more mature for their age, and it's not about unmanufactured, it's about the gun design, it's shitty things like that. Why would you stockpile? Why would you keep a journal? Why would you ever, the idea of me wanting to visit a place where other violence has occurred, I can't imagine that. So all of those earmarks that something might be wrong with your kid. If you fail to listen to them, then we're going to be taking care of your kid for the rest of his life or execute them.

You know, and it blows. It does. And again, it goes back to, we have these emotional reactions and want to right wrongs, and you can't, you can't, you know, something happens and it happens, and you have to process it correctly. And the application or the way you're going about preventing it may not always be the right way. I mean, there's, that's still societally how we talk about all kinds of things in the U.S. is, "Well, this was wrong." Okay, well, if that was 75 years ago, how do we, what do we do about it today? How do we prevent? We can, we can prevent something like, knowing what we know now, we can prevent something like that from happening. But what are we supposed to do about the people who are affected by it? It's that, that's tough. It's not easy, and the conversations are not easy to have. But you can't, you can't just arbitrarily assign value to different situations or different circumstances and say, "Hey, see, this is what it was." If it's, no, you, you just because you can't base it on emotion and you can't base it on a number of other factors that are less tangible and less scientific.

Well, you can base it on the process, Brian. We know certain things that we did in the past were wrong, and we're going to fix the process so they don't ever have to happen again. That's noble, Brian. That's noble, and that's what constitutional amendments are about.

Yeah, exact law is about.

Do some people misapply it? Was there a thing called the KKK? Were there lynch mobs? Yes. But guess what? There's less now, and as a society, we're doing much better. So I say in these situations that you brought up today, let's focus on making the process sound and rational and legal and best for society, rather than going in saying, "Well, you know, because what we want to do is we want to make somebody pay for those dead kids in that classroom, or for those people in that grocery store, or for that person killed." But guess what? When they're killed by a DUI, we've got a less of a standard, don't we?

That's a perfect example. You know, they've tried to go after restaurants and bars and stuff before for someone who was "overserved." I'm doing air quotes right there. Again, but the idea is that we, we look at all these different contributing factors to that, and then we handle that much differently than we do something like this. Mostly, because intent was not there on a DUI crash versus something else. But yeah, I mean, that's again, we, we kind of arbitrarily pick and choose, and you can't do that with the law. You can't. That's not how it works. You're not supposed to do that with the process in the system. It has to follow a set of principles and protocols and procedures, right? You don't get to just say, "Well, no, this is, this is who we're going after now," because, "that's who I think," because, "I'm angry." That's not how a civilized society operates.

Yeah, and stability. In a civil society, this isn't Lord of the Flies, this isn't the [expletive] Maze Runner and all this poor [expletive] that's out there. What we're trying to say is it's more like the stock market, Brian. We want to do what's the best for the most people for the longest period of time. And do things go sideways once in a while? Yeah. And that's what appellate courts are for, and specifically the Supreme Court is to correct us. I like the way that you said that. Now, just because something's corrected doesn't mean that it's going to pay backwards, but it may pay today and it may pay forwards.

Yeah. And at the end of the day, that's hugely important. Yeah. I agree. I think, I think that's a good place to sort of bring it in for a landing on, remember what you started talking about?

We both, we both had our rant periods just before. I feel better, Brian. I feel a lot better. Over here, listening to this, you're having a wonderful Christmas, or actual, we're still recording it, Hanukkah is going on right now too, or any holiday that you choose or choose not to celebrate. I'm, yeah, hopefully get some time with family or a break from work. If you don't celebrate any of these holidays, take advantage of the fact that other people do and are not focused on working. So chill and be careful on the roads and when you go shopping, Brian. I would say this, I would say if anybody wants to help our Arcadia coming into the next year, invest in Townhouse crackers because parents' dad is arriving today, and apparently, you only take a record at [expletive] various crackers, various meats and things, various, you know, dried or cured salted meats to the house that I'm just like, "What the hell is this?" He sent me a box of fish. I love your father, but there was no, nothing. It was a cardboard box frozen to the Jesus loaded with fish. What a, what a wonderful man here. Apparently, my, my parents don't think we have stores near where I live. But the Townhouse crackers, I saw at least four or five boxes.

Oh, yeah, there's a half a dozen boxes of those specific type of crackers. I guess so, God bless them.

Yeah, I bless them, but it's better than five or six bottles of gin.

Oh, we got those too. They still obviously got plenty of boots. I'm sorry. Sorry. I had to go, I had to go purchase those. So in preparation. But all right. Well, I, I just be safe.

Two great things.

Yeah, everyone, I hope you have a, we'll be, we'll be back right after the holidays. So hope everyone's doing well, and please don't forget that training changes behavior.