He's a 13 year old. He's a kid by any measure you care to mention.
Ok so? There are tons are kids that do something similar or worse to what he's done, are we just supposed to say "He's a kid"? "He's a kid" is not an argument, and will never be one in the face of the law save for the extreme cases.
Most of us aren't opposed to the kid serving in juvie, per se. What we are is:
a) disagreeing to the claims of "murderous intent" or "torture" which are such an obvious example of conflating result with intent that it's not even funny.
b) objecting to people asking for him and his parents to be thrown in jail.
c) noting that the enduring guilt he'll have for life is far worse than any punishment you can legally give him.
d) observing he'd be better served (in the actual rehabilitative sense of justice, i.e. making him a functioning member of society, as opposed to just exacting vengeance) with psychiatric help.
e) related to the above, objecting to throwing him into some category of tainted, irredeemable subpeople because of something he did at 13 that turned out horribly wrong.
a) Which is exactly why I never specifically mentioned murderous intent. At the same time, from what we know, the bully specifically used cheese, and administered in a way that would guarantee a reaction, especially given that he had knowledge that his target had food allergies. So you can't try to act like he wasn't at the very least aware of the impact his actions would have on the child.
b) This is the only one I agree with. It has to be one or the other for me. Both are excessive. At the same time, I can understand why people use that logic however flawed it is: the parents are responsible for their children's actions until they turn 18. And it's not just the parents, there appears to be gross negligence on the school's part given what we know about the parents providing multiple pieces of medical information to the school, and yet they did nothing to ensure safety.
c) How do you even know this? Do you know his mental state of mind, or did you pull it out of your ass? Do you even know if he has sociopathic and/or psychopathic tendencies? This is extreme projection with no basis in logic and evidence of what we know of the bully's state of mind. This is nothing more than an assumption that the bully is going to care that his actions got a child killed when we have no indication of believing this will be the case.
d) Which is a completely one-sided idea of justice you're preaching. Yes, justice is supposed to be about rehabilitation (in comparison to the nonsense we see in the criminal justice system), but you cannot ignore the fact that his actions caused damage to the family, and that there are consequences for doing something like that. If he needs psychiatric help, cool, but what I am against is people handwaving away what he did as if they're treating a 5 year old kid, or bringing up scientific research like brain development and then ignoring that children can be taught not to endanger people with food allergies.
e) The idea that he did something that "turned out horribly wrong" is complete bullshit. Again, the bully specifically used cheese and administered it in such a way that the victim was going to get a reaction no matter what. This wasn't a streak of dumb luck (such as if a kid left cheese around, and the victim picked it up) or happenstance that just so happened to get a child killed.
Even assuming you can guarantee such a thing (and you damn well cannot, so kindly stop projecting), "you would be outraged and asking for retribution if this was your kid" is a really bad argument in favor of anything. It's the exact same appeal to emotion used to justify the death penalty, "you'd want to see the murderer of your daughter die". Well, yes, I probably would, but that doesn't mean I would be right. There's a reason we don't generally allow people with personal connections to a case to rule in them. People feeling more strongly aren't more correct.
Which is all the more hilarious that you're calling me out for projection, when you did the exact same thing by projecting the bully's mental state without any shred of evidence that he feels this much remorse for his actions, and that it will carryover for the rest of his life. Just because you think so, doesn't make it so. As for what I said, it was to point to how people are so quick to act "moral," and downplay what happened simply because he's a "kid," or some other bullshit reason, when in actuality, it's one-sided in favour of defending what the bully did and ignoring what the victim went through, and what his family has to go through. It's easy to make judgements and virtue-signal about someone else's kid until you have to deal with the same problem yourself.
