The brutal reality of dangerous children

I've been conducting an e-mail exchange with a correspondent who strongly objected to my support for Erick Gelhaus over the Andy Lopez shooting incident.  In her view, to shoot a child, even if he or she may be armed, is just plain inexcusable.  I quote:  "He was a child!  He wasn't an adult!  No child can be responsible for his actions, so how could he shoot at him?"

Unfortunately, a child can kill just as easily as an adult under the wrong circumstances.  Consider the following examples:

• A twelve-year-old boy was shooting at US forces in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the 'Blackhawk Down' battle.  He was shot dead by a US serviceman.  According to the reports I've read, his AK-47 was found next to his body, half its magazine fired, and two spare magazines tucked into his belt.
• In Iraq, there have been several incidents where children have been 'recruited' as suicide bombers.  In Gaza, Hamas children's TV programs extol the virtues of 'jihad' and becoming a martyr, and encourage children to 'volunteer' for 'martyrdom missions'.  (You can watch one of their programs on YouTube, including subtitles.)  In case they don't 'volunteer', their parents are 'encouraged' to 'motivate' them to do so.
• Military forces all over the world routinely recruit and use child soldiers.  They've been guilty of some of the worst atrocities of modern times - witness, for example, what happened in Sierra Leone.
• I have personal experience of an incident in South Africa where a mother, who was a trained terrorist, strapped her six-month-old daughter to her breast and ran towards an Army truck filled with soldiers, raising a Molotov cocktail as if to throw it into the vehicle.  She appeared suddenly from around a building at very close range, leaving the soldiers no other option but to fire on her to stop her.  They did so, shooting through (and killing) her daughter in the process.  Needless to say, they were heavily criticized for 'shooting a baby' - but their accusers said not one word about the true circumstances of the incident.  That would have spoiled their propaganda opportunity.

You may argue that those are extreme cases, and would in any event never happen in North America.  Think again.

In case you thought Mexican drug cartels had sunk as low as they could get, a new report details how they use children as young as 11 years old to do their murderous bidding.

In the last decade, the cartels “have recruited thousands of street gang members, school drop-outs and unskilled workers,” the International Crisis Group recently reported. The ICG, a non-government organization that seeks to prevent conflict, notes many of these “recruits” — to use a clumsy term — are younger than 18, considered expendable, and deliberately ordered to attack superior Mexican military forces.

According to military officers interviewed by the organization, the “cartel bosses will treat the young killers as cannon fodder, throwing them into suicidal attacks on security forces.”

First, the children are enticed or manipulated into joining the cartels, and given basic weapons instruction at training camps, many of which have been discovered in the jungles along the Guatemalan border. The weapons are varied, ranging from AR-15 rifles to Uzi submachine guns, and .38 and 9-mm caliber pistols. Next, the kids are put into cells led by experienced cartel soldiers, who have some prior training with the military or police.

. . .

The case of Edgar Jimenez Lugo, or “El Ponchis,” is one of the more disturbing. At 15, he was convicted of committing multiple murders for the Beltran Leyva Cartel, which he began at age 11, and was sentenced to three years in a juvenile prison due to maximum juvenile sentencing laws — while the case was flaunted in the Mexican and international press. More recently, accused 22-year-old assassin Adrian Ivan Pizana was arrested on a drug-related murder charge. Pizana had previously served time in a detention facility as a teen after being convicted of seven gangland killings.

There's more at the link. Underlined text is my emphasis.

As if to emphasize the above report, Mexican child criminals are already being used to smuggle drugs into the USA, and US teens have already been recruited to commit murders on behalf of Mexican drug cartels.  Even leaving Mexican cartels out of the picture, US gangs recruit children as young as nine - and they commit murders, too, whether in gangs or as individuals.

Still think it can't happen here?  And do you still think that a young Hispanic teen, carrying what appeared to be an AK-47 rifle on the streets of a town in California - and let's point out the obvious;  a state bordering Mexico and filled with illegal aliens, including cartel criminals - should not have elicited law enforcement suspicion?  If you believe that, you're living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

California is filled with gang-bangers.  Gunfights on the streets in broad daylight have plagued some cities for a long time, and they're spreading to others.  Here are two recent news reports from Oakland that illustrate the problem.

A quick search on YouTube reveals many similar incidents from other cities in that state.  Such graphic reports illustrate that police in California have good reason to be extremely suspicious of any youngster carrying what appears to be a real gun.  If that youngster doesn't comply with their orders, but appears to raise his 'weapon' when challenged, what are they supposed to assume?

I repeat:  under the circumstances as they've been described so far, if I'd been in the officer's shoes, I'd probably have opened fire as well.

Peter