From the Associated Press (via CNN) comes the story of Nicholas Browning, who killed his parents and two brothers on Sunday. The story is tragic, and there’s no real insight yet about the motives of the young man.

The headline is “Scout, 15, allegedly killed family without warning”, but the text of the article itself doesn’t say anything of the sort. The first paragraph says that authorities haven’t offered up any insight, which could mean they don’t know, or it could mean that they don’t want to talk to the press about it (yet?). The next mention of motive is a quote from Paul A. Mones, author of When a Child Kills:

Mones said slayings are typically motivated by one of two factors: “extreme family dysfunction in terms of physical and emotional abuse, or severe mental health issues that pervade the family, whether it’s the perpetrator or the parents or themselves.

“There are cases where kids just snap out of the blue and go on a rampage, but it’s really, really rare.”

Okay, so authorities either don’t know or aren’t telling anything about motive or warnings, an expert says it’s really rare that these things just happen out of the blue, and the AP decides that the headline should be that there was no warning? This is really shoddy journalism. If that’s not enough, it quickly becomes obvious that the piece is motivated by political bias in this paragraph:

Experts said easy access to guns was a common thread in cases where children kill their parents.

What does that have to do with anything? I am completely certain that nearly every child who killed his or her parents throughout history had at least one arm, but that is utterly meaningless to describing why it happens. Children without guns would have a harder time killing their parents, but imagine how much harder it would be for children without arms. I think that this makes it obvious that the best way to prevent “familicide” by children is to cut off the arms of all children at birth.

The article tells us that about 300 teens per year are charged with killing one or both parents in the United States. If 100% of those killings were committed with guns, that would not indicate that guns are a “risk factor” any more than my example about the murderers having arms. What percentage of children who have access to guns kill their parents would be a slightly more telling statistic, but only if compared to a similar group of children who did not have access to guns. In addition, it would be useful to examine not only murders, but all serious violence against parents^[a].

“The biggest risk factor that was not prevented was his access to firearms, and I think that’s the biggest tragedy,” said Dr. Anandhi Narasimhan, a Los Angeles-based child psychiatrist.

The biggest risk factor was Browning’s access to firearms, says a Los Angeles-based child psychiatrist about a crime that happened in Maryland. I know the article says that the late Mr. Browning was a highly regarded business attorney, but it seems unlikely to me that he was regularly shelling out money to send his child to Los Angeles for counseling. Therefore, it is probably safe to say that Dr. Narasimhan has absolutely no special knowledge about this case. As a matter of fact, he says as much in the very next paragraph.

Narasimhan noted that because mental health records are confidential, it’s impossible to know for sure whether Browning was suffering from mental illness or had shown other warning signs, such as bullying at school or cruelty to animals.

The truth of the matter is, Narsimhan doesn’t know what the biggest risk factor was, because he doesn’t know the facts of this case.

Why is access to firearms a large risk factor? What percentage of children with access to firearms murder their parents? What other factors are being considered? A history of abuse from the parents? A history of violent behavior from the child in question? Mental illness? The author of this article and the individuals he (or she) quotes are very explicit about the fact that they don’t know the facts of the case, and barring that knowledge, it is extremely irresponsible of them to cast blame on an inanimate object.

This article simply does not give enough information to support any of its “guns are evil” nonsense, and the AP and CNN should be ashamed for publishing this tripe. The only good point about this entire article is that the author didn’t also take the time to point the finger at video games while he was at it.

1. It is probably safe to assume that, among children who have the desire to kill their parents, those who have access to guns are more likely to be successful, but if the desire is there and an attempt is made, the crime is still committed. If we find that the violent crime rate is similar when all factors are equal except for access to guns, we can determine that guns are not the source of the problem. [↩]