The shooters family

@sissy15 (12269)
United States
January 26, 2016 12:56am CST
With all of the mass shootings and things happening all I find myself conflicted. Not about gun safety, but about how I feel for the shooters families. I mean it's so easy to say that the shooter is a bad person and he deserves to die, and they probably do, but then I think about their family. Not every person who commits a serious family came from a broken home, some of them had loving families. No one wants to be the parent of the person that murdered a bunch of innocent people, but that doesn't stop them from loving their child. If someone murdered someone I loved I would want them to pay, I'd want the death sentence for them, but as a parent if it were my son that did the shooting I wouldn't want that. Clearly anyone that would just kill someone in cold blood has mental issues, maybe if they had treatment they needed they wouldn't have done it. I remember the interview with the father of the kid who shot all of those people in California, the kid who was upset that he was still a virgin, and had this belief that he was somehow better than most people. He was so filled with hate, and his dad didn't really understand how bad this kid was. When asked if he wished his son was never born, he said sometimes he wondered if the world would have been better if his son wasn't. My heart broke for this man, he didn't ask for his son to turn out the way he did, he felt as though he had failed, and maybe he did, I can't say. It's so easy to hate, and so hard to fully understand. I just know I love my son, and when I say there's nothing he can do to change that I mean it, I may not agree, I may be disappointed, but my love for him won't just disappear because he did something horrible. I watched this father struggle with his emotions, and I can't even begin to imagine how he was feeling. People were painting him to be this bad guy because of what his son did, and really he was just as much of a victim as the others maybe more so, because he gets to live with what his son did for the rest of his life and blame himself. About a year ago there was a shooting at a Texas military hospital (I think that's what it was), where this guy open fired and shot and killed a psychologist and then turned the gun on himself. I bring this up because that man was my neighbor at one point in time. He was always off, this is the same man who sprayed my dog with mace because she was barking at him through our fence, as that's what dogs do. She wasn't going to bite him. After that of course she tried to attack him at any chance she got, and my dog was a friendly dog. My dog knew what everyone else didn't. Anyway I felt for his family, I knew his family. My brother did work for his dad, I used to go to his brother's house all the time as my friend's mom was living with his brother at that time. I knew his family well, and they were good people, but despite this their son still had issues, and he took an innocent life. People get upset because we turn these murderers into rock stars, and I guess we do, and we shouldn't, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't learn about them, because sometimes we need to know why someone does something to help prevent something like it happening in the future, it's the idea that we want to understand better, because they did something horrible and unforgivable, but that doesn't mean they were always bad people, that doesn't mean there wasn't something redeeming about them, maybe if they did have help they wouldn't have done what they did. I am always conflicted about this stuff because I see it from different angles. I find myself thinking about "what if the shooter was my son?" I pray everyday that I raise my son to be a good man, and that my son would never be that kid, but what if he turned out like that anyway? I would want someone to give my son a chance, I'd want him to get help. You love your kids despite everything bad they've ever done.
2 people like this
No responses