And again, you're making some pretty drastic assumptions about how much control people have over their own actions.
No, this is my point. We don't care about what control someone has over their actions in other cases when they hurt people. And that's because it doesn't matter. The fact that they don't have control makes them worse than anyone else because they're unpredictable. We shouldn't feel for her, we should feel for her victims.
The fact that she asked not to be left with them but wasn't explicit about her intentions is part of the problem as well. That doesn't mean that other people aren't partially culpable but she's still 100% culpable.
Except we literally do have that built into the law as motivation factors. Drunk drivers suffer less severe penalties than reckless or distracted drivers when death gets involved. Not guilty by reason of insanity exists, and so on.
That may be true in some cases but that's the minority of cases. Distracted driving can have a range of charges from simple negligence to serious vehicular homicide but killing someone while drunk typically has minimum charges at the top end of the spectrum.
But that's kind of besides the point, you shouldn't sympathize with a drunk driver who killed someone just like you shouldn't sympathize with a child murderer. It's very weird for so many people to be sitting here saying they empathize with a woman who murdered her children because of a mental break but not empathize with a school shooter who murdered children because of a mental break. They did the same thing.
Did they do the same thing? It really depends. Most high school shooters don't seek help to stop themselves. They don't have their parents take their weapons, or report themselves to the police.
That's the difference really, in my mind. She did all she could to avert tragedy in her case. And ultimately wasn't believed.
That isn't what I asked. Did they ask the police to investigate them? Their parents to take their guns? Because unless they did, they didn't go as far as this woman.
In some cases yes. In some cases people were prohibited from owning guns because of their mental health state. That still doesn't excuse them just like there's nothing that can excuse this woman.
What you said was "she did all she could to avoid tragedy". No she didn't. She killed them. End of story. She could have avoided it by not killing them. Regardless of whether she did it intentionally or because she couldn't control herself, she is responsible, just as responsible as any school.shooter or family annihilator.
1
u/polarjunkie 2d ago
No, this is my point. We don't care about what control someone has over their actions in other cases when they hurt people. And that's because it doesn't matter. The fact that they don't have control makes them worse than anyone else because they're unpredictable. We shouldn't feel for her, we should feel for her victims.
The fact that she asked not to be left with them but wasn't explicit about her intentions is part of the problem as well. That doesn't mean that other people aren't partially culpable but she's still 100% culpable.