After a mass shooting like Viriginia Tech or the recent incident in Arizona, support and sympathy pour out across the nation for the families of the victims. Very little of the compassion, however, is shown towards the family of the murder. Should it be?
David Kaczynski, brother of the Unabomber, expressed his sympathy for the Loughner family after hearing the news about the Arizona shootings. Ted Kacynski, the Unabomber, began a mail bombing spree that left three dead and twenty-three others injured. The target of one of the FBI's most costly investigations, Ted Kacynski evaded capture for twenty years before his own brother turned him in.
In the article, David Kaczynski describes the horrible feeling of finding out that his brother was a murderer. Typically, the most devasted and shocked is the murderer's own family. David Kacynski never realized that his brother was capable of such violence, adding that his "whole reality has changed."
What do you guys think? Should a murderer's family deserve some sympathy or should they be blamed for raising a killer?
6 comments:
I definitely think that criminals' families deserve sympathy and compassion. How would it feel to find out that a person who you have trusted and loved all your life (whether it be your parent, child, sibling, or other relative) has wrongfully taken the lives of others? I can't imagine how David Kaczynski must have felt when he turned in his brother. Perhaps the killer's family will begin to blame themselves for not knowing what the murderer was going to do beforehand, recalling clues and feeling responsible. The father of the Arizona shooter supposedly confronted his son a few hours before the shooting when he saw him unloading a suspicious bag from his car, but his son ran away. After his father found out, he probably felt guilty that he didn't stop his son, but if he didn't know his son's intentions, there's no reason for him to take any blame.
I totally agree with Sarah said. Yes, Ted Kaczynski did an incredibly harmful thing, and so did the shooter in Tucson, Arizona, but it's almost cruel to consider that these parents were "raising a killer." Their actions should be punished, but we probably won't be able to understand the person's motives or characteristics. Their families definitely deserve sympathy and support because this has probably also hurt them in ways we can't imagine.
dont like the idea of blaming the parents one bit. some things the parents can not control. although they are his responsibility, and it is probably human nature to blame the parents... well what would you feel like if your kids was a killer... yeah, agree with sarah.
-raymond lim
The family does deserve some sympathy. There are plenty cases where children always disobey their parents and such. And this case was simply out of their control. I'm sure their parents or family didn't teach or influence the bomber to make bombs and kill people. So this is probably an act done independently by Ted Kacynski. The family does deserve sympathy, not blame. David should not feel guilty because he didn't know of his brother's intentions. I'm quite certain that if he did, he would stop this from happening. He just didn't know.
I also agree that the family should not be blamed for "raising a killer". The role of the parent is to teach their kids right from wrong and to be their role model along with a bunch of other roles, but it is not their fault that their family member has become a murder. There is nothing that they can do about it and I do think that the families of criminals do deserve a little bit of sympathy because they had no idea that their child or brother was going to commit the crime.
The families of the killers deserve a lot of sympathy, because if they are a decent people they probably feel guilty enough without the huge publicity that surrounds mass shootings. Not very many people raise a child with the intent of raising a killer and whither or not the parents or siblings treatment toward that individual foster a seething hatred that manifest in a way that causes many people harm is not really the family's fault. No matter what people did to the killer in the past, like putting peanut butter in their shoes, those individuals are not responsible for the actions of another person. As commonly stated, the only one who you can control is yourself. How an individual processes information and then releases stress and or anger, sometimes neither of these emotions are the cause of a mass killing, is entirely up to the individual. Parents are "suppose" to shape their children mind but there are plenty of cases where the parents are really great and amazing people and for some reason their children, who by this time are adults, are terrors. This is a long and round about way of saying that I don't believe the family is at fault for the crimes of their family members and therefor deserve lots of compassion because it would be extremely difficult to watch someone you love be painted in a light to the public in a way that is not true to who they really are necessary.
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