[dgack]

I know this isn't going to be a popular position to take, but the fact that every one of these bastards is basically a teenager, *IS* a tragedy as well. So much was made of the mistakes that Taylor supposedly made in his life, and the fact that he had begun to figure things out, and then you look at these kids and it's pretty clear nobody has ever gotten through to them.

Those myspace pictures are really sad to me, personally. Thing is, my friends and I did a lot of stupid shit in my teenage years, some of which we foolishly took ridiculous pictures of ourselves doing. In my case it was vandalizing street signs, shoplifting from a place we all worked, driving out to vacant fields to get drunk, etc.. I'm not proud of those things, but we did them, and we got away with them.

Eventually we realized, "hey, I have a future to think about, college to think about, I could have gotten arrested, gotten killed in a car accident driving drunk, or hurt someone else" and we straightened the hell up.

Now, I'm not saying the things these kids have done deserve any kind of excuse, because there's a line you cross when you pull the trigger of a gun (and frankly, the moment you start carrying one). But, what I am saying is, it's not too hard of a stretch for me to imagine these kids being, at their core, just a bunch of really stupid teenagers with no respect for morals, values, or what's important in life. (The really heartbreaking thing for me watching those photos scroll by is the one picture of a child with the caption "my son" followed by a picture of this douchebag sitting on the curb with his boys looking baked out of his mind).

These kids weren't stone cold career criminals, but they are probably a perfect specimen showing how stone cold career criminals are formed.