Kids, Guns, Death and Consequences … What is Going on with Our Youth in Today’s Society? (UPDATE: YouTube Massacre Killing)

There are two real lessens that all teens need to learn and understand. There are consequences to your actions and life is so short and precious. Of course there are many adults that could learn that lesson as well.

What is going on with children in today’s society where life seems to mean so little? Just yesterday we were presented with a student who shot himself outside  a gym at his New Orleans suburb private school. The case was an attempted suicide, unlike the other school rampage shootings that have occurred recently.

Then we have the case where a 16 year old teen, Cory Ryder, actually hired a hitman to kill his parents because he was punished for poor grades by having his PlayStation confiscated and was banned from watching TV. Are you kidding!

Like many middle-class, suburban American parents, Shannan and Joey Troiano worried about their son’s behaviour and his bad grades at high school. And like many wayward teenagers, Cory Ryder was grounded for weeks at a time, had a PlayStation confiscated and was banned from watching TV.

Less typically, this 16-year-old was plotting to murder his parents by hiring a hitman, while his mother was organising a sting operation involving a police officer posing as a contract killer.

Cory’s trial is scheduled to begin today at the circuit court in St Mary’s County, Maryland. His mother is expected to testify as a witness for the prosecution.

UPDATE I: YouTube massacre: Schoolboy gunman posts threat on the internet then kills eight

We no sooner posted the question asking what is going on with kids today and their lack of respect for human life and we are presented with a teeneager named by Finnish newspapers as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who posted threats on the internet and then killed 8 people.

A teenager ran amok in his school yesterday, killing seven fellow pupils and the headmistress hours after posting a chilling prediction of the massacre on the internet.

As more than a dozen other pupils were treated in hospital for gunshot wounds, witnesses said the 18-year-old gunman had clinically walked from classroom to classroom at Joleka High School in southern Finland, selecting his victims before shooting them.

The YouTube killer: eight die in schoolroom shooting massacre

The chilling home-made video shows a young man staring out of a blood-red screen, pointing a gun and declaring: “I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit.”

Hours after posting his “massacre manifesto” on the YouTube website, a gunman presumed to be Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, walked into Jokela High School in southern Finland and shot dead five boys, two girls and the headmistress with a .22 calibre handgun. About a dozen more were wounded.