I am really angry all over again as Brandon McInerney is on trial for the murder of Lawrence King. Brandon is [1] charged with shooting King at point blank range twice in the back of his head in their eighth grade English class on February 12, 2008.

McInerney’s defense is sexual harassment, because King apparently had a crush on the younger McInerney.

What has made the headlines recently is that McInerney, who was 14 at the time he allegedly shot the 15 year-old King, is that the accused killer is being tried as an adult. To me, trying him under the rules of adult courts is irrelevant and of course will only elicit a spectrum of views about the juvenile justice system. What angers me is that when a juvenile is accused of such a gross capital offense, it is really his parents who should be on trial. And our so-called justice system makes no provision for literally holding the parents of a minor responsible for the criminal behavior of their child.

In the Los Angeles Times article in Tuesday’s paper, it is revealed that the 14 year-old was handling a .22 caliber revolver. Where did he get it?

“Another witness testified that the detectives found a cache of weapons in an unlocked closet at McInerney’s home.

“The weapons reportedly belonged to his grandfather, William McInerney Sr.

[2]

“Ammunition, an instructional DVD called ‘Shooting in Realistic Environments’ [available used from [3] Amazon for as little as $6.25!] and drawings of swastikas were found in a bedroom that the defendant shared with an older brother stationed in Iraq, investigators said.”

If this evidence is true, the family and the household environment are the true “smoking gun” in the murder of a gay teenager. It is not the simple question, “Where were his parents?” but “What kind of values were being taught and what kind of parental control was being practiced in this Oxnard, California household? The internet could be named as an accomplice here, since any kid could put together the six dollars and a quarter to buy the training DVD.  Life is cheap.  So, apparently, is death.

In an undated [4] Queerty story, “we learn this disturbing fact about the killer of eighth grader Lawrence King: He boasted proudly of having guns at his house, just in case, on the off chance he wanted to kill someone, he could.”  (See: “[5] Boy accused of killing gay classmate bragged he had guns at home, police say,” July 20, 2009.)

When I Google the phrase “teaching kids to shoot guns” I get “about 1, 490,000″ hits. Some of them are on the negative side of the issue. Many, probably most, of them are on the side of literally teaching kids to shoot guns. The NRA has a page on “[6] Safety Information for Parents”.  Gee, great!  The parents of Brandon McInerney hardly need to worry now about teaching their son safety information. If convicted of first degree murder, he will be behind bars for a long time. Apparently the crime was pre-meditated, by the way, because he had bragged to other school chums that he was going to kill King.  No one at the school took him seriously. But why didn’t his family take it seriously, since they had to know about the instructional DVD and the swastikas?

[7]

Another cool site is at [8] www.christiangunowner.com (screen capture above) where a true oxymoron is this guy’s motto: “Christian first American second gun owner third.” In the first place, Jesus tells us to put down our weapons. “All who take the sword will die by the sword,” Matthew 26:52. I don’t think there’s any wiggle room for this. The sword is the ancient equivalent of today’s handgun. How any Christian can rationalize keeping, using and teaching their kids to shoot guns in realistic environments (not on a firing range) is an unconscionable abuse of Christian ethics. No, the news accounts don’t reveal whether or not the McInerney family was a Christian church-going family—I am not holding my breath to find out. But if Christian people and Christian churches refuse to teach rightly and control the extremist behavior of their members, then I say leave it to the government to hold the adults responsible for the criminal behavior of their children.

This is way bigger than a gay/straight thing, although it is an especially deep sadness that juvenile murders involve a teenage gay kid who barely had begun to understand himself as gay or learn how to behave appropriately as an “out” teenager.

And the fuzzy line in ethics and law over trying a juvenile as an adult only illustrates the fuzziness of our culture that cannot decide whether to be ethical, to have concerns, to have limits, or to say “whatever…” to virtually every moral question. On the Amazon page selling the DVD on how to shoot “in realistic environments,” for example, is another add for Kinder Care Learning Centers. Do child care centers now offer to teach kids to shoot guns? Is this okay in our society, that to express affection for someone of the same sex is still not okay (apparently labeled as sexual harassment by McInerney’s defense attorney, because he was “humiliated” by King’s affection), but it is okay to train children to kill one another.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles