I’m still very curious about this kid, though. Was he influenced by Columbine? Did he display signs of psychopathic behavior while in Taiwan? What kinds of changes to his personality did he undergo in the months spent in Philadelphia ? (if any - the answer may well be ‘none’)
Was the non-shotgun ammunition purchased? How was it purchased? Most cartridges come in boxes of 20, 25, 30, or 50. None of the totals reported are divisible by those numbers. Did he use a rifle in the US? Who supplied the rifle? Where was it used? Etc.
I agree with the officer who praised the kid who turned him in. Good move.
It seemed odd to me when the initial reports said he had 9mm ammunition but had apparently been looking online for AR15s and AK47s, neither of which are usually chambered for 9mm.
So that solves that little mystery.
Very true. Weird, smart kids often end up normal enough when their find their calling. I wonder what happened to him to push him down the wrong road.
Yep it’s a big thing in Taiwan, there is an airgun convention held in our neighbourhood hall every year , some serious looking hardware . Odd NAZI walking g around as well.
What I don’t get is how is a threat a joke? When it’s not been carried out yet ?
My armchair psychology take is a cold, distant father (effectively, no positive male role model), and a suffocating, overprotective mother. In his struggle to assert his independence, he decided to take a fast, violent shortcut. Trying to navigate the social hierarchy was just too much hard work. Of course, he could have just been born bad.
Whenever something like this happens some people call mental health, then others counter that this is inaccurate and the majority of shooters would not be considered mentally ill. I think around a fifth of mass killings are committed by someone who would be considered mentally ill. How the experts work this out after the event is beyond me.
I suppose it depends upon how one diagnoses mental illness. I would consider pre-meditated murder to be an act of madness, when clearly in the majority of cases it isn’t.
i noticed the ammunition part also. wondering where he got it. I can see a kid with 1 bullet as an odd keepsake but he seemed to be building a stockpile. as illogical as it seems…
Stupid mom - i guess she put it on her credit card? When my kids were growing up, I remember these kind of parents. If you look at them, they look perfectly respectful, then you find out they are…(fill in the blank). Has the dad made any statements?
Well there is no greater failure than failing as a parent. Most of the time, they are clueless about what went wrong. Stuff like this comes as a surprise. So when they come to their senses, the fall is traumatic.
The other odd thing is that the 9mm handgun was described by a reporter as “untraceable.” I’m very curious that (in the vast majority of news stories about guns there are without fail factual errors). I wonder what the reporter meant by “untraceable” in this case.
Maybe not made of metal? Like it cannot be detected by common detectors, made of resin or something.
Maybe he made it using a 3d printer?
Ban on printers incoming?
Maybe. Or had the serial number filed off. Or something entirely unrelated to untraceable, unless that’s a word the reporter quoted from a police official. Untraceable is an unusual adjective.
Exactly. I wonder why TN chose this word. As far as I know, it’s not possible to purchase legally untraceable parts, much less sufficient untraceable parts to assemble a whole handgun.
Without fail American news articles about gun violence report factual errors. Most of the time you have to wait a few days for all the corrections and facts to come out.
My guess is they were trying to convey the idea that the gun was assembled out of parts from different sources, thus not having a single origin. Journalism is basically dead.
I don’t know…maybe the gas masks and fully functional flamethrower might have given them a hint at some stage!?!
Ah but he was 'so polite and so nice according to C list Taiwanese celebs and he was ‘only joking’ and white society is often ‘racist to Asians’ and it was 'a misunderstanding (all quotes from the media here).
That the parents helped him buy some of this stuff (for a high school student ) is really messed up.
But maybe not that unusual in the US and certainly not neccessarily illegal.