Slain dad taught boy, 8, how to use guns

[Contrary1]

How sad is this? I had a friend who shot an intruder when she was just 12 years old. She had been taught by her father how to use a gun. One night, her parents were down the street playing cards. A man broke in. Sitting on her bed, with a phone in one hand, and a gun in the other, she told him that if he took one more step, she would shoot him in the knee. He did. She did.

That is the way to teach young people how to use a gun. She could have killed him if she wanted to, but her father taught her that killing another person should be the last resort. She held the gun on him while she called the police and her parents.

ST. JOHNS, Ariz. - A man who police believe was shot and killed by his 8-year-old son had consulted a Roman Catholic priest about whether the boy should have a gun and had taught him how to use firearms, the clergyman said Saturday.

The Rev. John Paul Sauter said the father, Vincent Romero, 29, wanted his son to learn how to hunt, while the boy's stepmother, Tiffany, suggested he have a BB gun.

Police say the boy used a 22.-caliber rifle Wednesday to kill his father and another man, Timothy Romans, 39, of San Carlos.

Romero was an avid hunter who taught his son how to use a rifle to kill prairie dogs, said Sauter, of St. Johns Catholic Church.

"He wanted to make sure the kid wasn't afraid of guns, knew how to handle it," the priest said. "He was just too young. ... That child, I don't think he knows what he did, and it was brutal."

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27600105/

[Shardik]

1. As you sow...

So shall ye reap.

[Duke Newcombe]

2. So, they deserved to die, then?

Interesting sentiment.

[girl gone mad]

3. ...

"Police had responded to calls of domestic violence at the Romero home in the past, but authorities were searching records Saturday to determine when those calls were placed, Melnick said."

[Shardik]

4. What ass did you pull that out of?

[Duke Newcombe]

16. Yours, obviously.

Two families just lost sons/husbands, and now there is a traumatized child that will probably never be "right" after this tragedy. Yeah, I guess now is the best time to use them to score points for an agenda. :sarcasm:

If you didn't mean to say that these individual(s) "had it coming" because the father's choices, then perhaps you should investigate the actual meaning of sayings such as "as you sow, so shall you reap" before using them.

[Heidi]

6. There's a pretty good argument to be made that kids don't kill in a vacuum.

Regardless of the circumstances, charging an eight-year-old child with murder is misguided at best. I'd like to know what the rush to charge the kid was all about; the police have said their investigation isn't even complete.

[malaise]

5. I heard something last night suggesting that this kid

may not have committed this crime. I'm hoping that's true.

[Heidi]

7. If there even _was_ a crime.

Killing isn't always a crime, and the police concede that the investigation isn't complete.

[Undercurrent]

8. I hope so too,

if there was even a crime in the legal sense, as Heidi suggested.

I'm sure that if this young child did kill his father, and his father's friend that there were other major issues going on in the boy's life. I've been around guns all of my life, and was shooting at age 7. I never killed anyone. Of course I was not abused, nor did I have a serious mental illness as a child either. I'm convinced that there is more to this sad story than what we know so far.

[malaise]

9. Love that graphic

:D

[Undercurrent]

10. Thanks.

[Shardik]

11. Kicking: This is a tragedy that bears more discussion.

There is not enough sorrow to go around on this one.

[Heidi]

12. I can't think of any circumstances under which an eight-year-old child

should be charged with murder. Even a child who murders with malice (and there is no evidence that was the case with the kid referenced in the OP), there's something terribly, terribly wrong with the child and/or the circumstances, in my view.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

13. I'll bet the kid was abused - this sort of thing doesn't happen in a vacumn.

n/t

[Shardik]

17. This sort of thing doesn't happen without guns in the house.

[TWiley]

14. Wow, a double (potential) Homocide. I guess guns failed to keep that family safe

Did you ever stop to think that both men would still be alive, and that an 8 year old would not be facing criminal prosecution, if guns did not happen to be in that household?

[AlCzervik]

15. i was taught at about the same age how to use handguns and rifles.

and all about gun safety and i never killed anything.

There is way more to this story no doubt.