A 14-year-old boy allegedly fatally shot his older sister in Florida after a family argument over Christmas presents, officials said Tuesday.

The teen had been out shopping on Christmas Eve with Abrielle Baldwin, his 23-year-old sister, as well as his mother, 15-year-old brother and sister’s children, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said during a news conference.

The teenage brothers got into an argument about who was getting more Christmas presents.

“They had this family spat about who was getting what and what money was being spent on who, and they were having this big thing going on in this store,” Gualtieri said.

  • Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Go into any of the relationship subreddits today and for the next few days and you will see countless Americans melting down into various degrees of rage and bitterness over Xmas presents.

    It’s like this very goddamn year.

    Can anyone explain this part of the culture to me?

    I’m not saying I hate all Americans or anything ridiculous like that, the cast majority of Americans I’ve met are good hearted people but when it comes to Xmas and in what I’m given understand is the modern vernacular: “y’all cray.”

    Don’t any of your families still watch the Charlie Brown Christmas? Because you really should.

    • MagicShel@programming.dev
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      9 months ago

      Go toxic places to read toxic things. I’ve never heard of this. But also I can’t imagine going to a relationship board and expecting to come away with anything but misanthropy regardless of time of year.

    • loki_d20@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Materialism is really big with a lot of people. My in-laws kids are spoiled rotten and only accept big brand name stuff because that’s all their parents give them for Christmas and Birthdays. Same people who can’t afford to pay their mortgage and are likely to lose the house in a few months.

      I like present-less holidays. Better to focus on just being with people I find. Also helps if there’s a lot of good, homemade food.

      • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        For me it’s all about consumables and experience. You like sauerkraut? I just made you a jar. You like classical music? Here are two tickets to the symphony. I just avoid stuff unless it’s like plates for someone who moved into their first apartment.

      • BossDj@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Americans live in a state of constant stress that is satiated by material possessions and trying to impress or be better than others. These kids were just trying to get their dose of imbalanced brain chemicals

    • NAK@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      There are 335 million people in the United States.

      One asshat shot someone.

      I’m not defending guns, shitty culture, or shitty people, but this is clearly a case where this kid has some sort of mental disorder. Literally hundreds of millions of families watched Charlie Brown and went the entire holiday without murdering each other

          • zergtoshi@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Each one of the 89 shootings was one too many.

            Any idea how many shootings were on Christmas day in Australia, Canada or Switzerland where a lot of people have guns too?

            By the way, if you look at shootings in Australia before and after semi-automatic rifles got banned in 1996 you know how to improve the situation in the US.

            • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Someone in Prague just killed 15 people with a bolt action firearm…

              We have an issue with our society, not our firearms.

            • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              9 months ago

              By the way, if you look at shootings in Australia before and after semi-automatic rifles got banned in 1996 you know how to improve the situation in the US.

              I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but you can also shoot people with bolt actions, lever actions; and SA, DA, and S/DA revolvers.

        • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          See, if it were 90 I could understand you being upset…, but it’s just 89! are we really going to make a scene about 89 totally avoidable deaths ?? when we could just enjoy Christmas with the children we might lose tomorrow ?

          (thanks for the source)

      • prole@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        No it is not clearly a case where the kid has some sort of mental disorder. You know literally nothing about this person.

        I would probably bet that this kid made a stupid split second choice in the heat of the moment about something that (partially likely due to raging teenage hormones) probably seemed very important at the time, and the guilt will haunt him until the end of his life (which, statistically speaking, just got much shorter on average).

        This is exactly why guns are so dangerous. It gives people (in this case, a literal child without a fully developed brain) the capability to make a decision to end another life in a split second.

        • NAK@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Murdering another human is a sign of mental disorder. Especially if it’s in a case like this. I don’t think it’s possible to argue “this human is acting rationally, losing control of yourself to the point where you literally murder someone is, indeed, a sign of mental stability.”

          Also, access to guns isn’t the reason people murder each other.

          In Christmas Day a 36 year old stabbed 2 children, 2 girls aged 14 and 16, for no other reason than seemingly, they weren’t white. A fucking racist asshole decided to attempt to murder kids. Is this person not suffering from a mental disorder? Should we stop people from owning knives too?

          Again, I have never said this was about gun ownership. People who think violent crime stops if guns are gone are delusional. It’s such a rhetorical trap. I bet conservative leadership in the United States love when liberals make this an issue, it’s one of huge issues that motivates their base.

          This is now, and always will be, a public health issue. You want less people to be victims of violent crime? Give us universal healthcare that also covers mental illness. Make it free, make education high quality, and free too. Crime will go down, violence will go down.

          The political discourse about guns disguises that entire debate. And it’s stupid that people fall for it.

          • lingh0e@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            The political discourse about guns disguises that entire debate. And it’s stupid that people fall for it.

            Only stupid people say dumb shit like “guns aren’t the problem, the ONLY problem is mental health”. People can expect reform in two separate yet connected topics. One can absolutely impact the other.

            Yeah, a crazy fucker stabbed a couple girls. He had a knife. I WISH that the crazy fucker who shot up entire classrooms at Uvalde or Sandy Hook had only had a knife.

            Provide better mental health AND tighter gun control policies.

            • NAK@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              I have never said anything about gun control, for it or against it.

              This is a mental health issue. Happy, well adjusted people don’t murder other people.

              It’s interesting you mention Sandy Hook. Did you know on the same day in China a mentally ill person ran through a Chinese school and stabbed 22 kids in the fucking head?

              Stabbings in Chinese schools are a huge issue. The person killed 8 of the kids by stabbing them in the head.

              But sure, keep focusing on guns. Let’s put all of our effort into that. That’s clearly more important than free, publicly funded mental healthcare.

              • lingh0e@sh.itjust.works
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                9 months ago

                I have never said anything about gun control, for it or against it.

                You’re apparently saying that we shouldn’t be focusing on guns because mental health is more important…

                But sure, keep focusing on guns. Let’s put all of our effort into that. That’s clearly more important than free, publicly funded mental healthcare.

                We can surely do both at the same time, don’t you think?

                • NAK@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  I really don’t.

                  The whole topic, in the current political environment, is so polarizing and so toxic, I think it torpedoes any progress that could be made in reducing gun violence.

                  I believe gun violence will go down if people have better mental healthcare, better access to housing, and better job prospects. My personal belief is people who commit violence against others are doing so because of mental disease. If you reduce their stress, make their future prospects better, and tell them they have a future, their prospects, and mental health, will improve.

                  America is more polarized now than it ever has been. A conservative and a liberal will never agree on gun control. They just won’t. But I do think a liberal and a conservative can agree that violence is a problem, and that conservatives would be willing to consider solutions to it that aren’t simply making firearms illegal.

                  It obviously wouldn’t reduce gun violence to 0 like a ban would, but focusing on it as a mental health issue, and addressing that, would reduce other forms of violent crime too. Less muggings, stabbing, rapes, etc. I believe, taken as a whole, there would be less crime and drastically less violent crime, doing that, than any kind of firearm ban could achieve.

                  Edit: the downvotes prove my point. American politics right now care more about winning whatever hot button issue someone has, rather than cooperating to make meaningful change.

                  How about everyone reading this does a mental exercise. Let’s say liberals decided not to care about gun control, and that issue wasn’t relevant in American politics for the last 20 years. Do you think the current supreme court would look the way it does? Do you think organizations like the NRA would have anywhere near the funding and power they have now? How many single issue conservative voters did simply not show up to vote if there was 0 chance a liberal majority would “take their guns”

          • prole@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            How convenient for you: a kid shoots and kills another kid, and just by default, you can make all sorts of assumptions about their mental health, and use it as a scapegoat, before the topic of firearms can even be brought up.

            Please save us all the time and energy and don’t pretend like you actually give a single shit about funding mental health care. A thing conservatives have also gone out of their way to de-fund.

            • NAK@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Interesting you’d label a guy advocating for universal healthcare and increased education spending a conservative.

              You’re not even listening to my arguments.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        If it was the only shooting that day, it would have been a peaceful one for a change. Hint: It wasn’t.

        • NAK@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Like I said, I’m not defending guns.

          What I hate is people who attack where I live, with sweeping generalizations about how shitty a place it is. It isn’t. The United States is entirely neutral. There are good things about it and bad things about it. Every country has their issues, and reducing violent crimes to such a simplistic focus as “lol, guns bad, USA sucks” is catastrophically stupid.

          One of the main ways I judge people is if they punch down. A good example of this is Trump’s feud with Greta Thunberg. At the time he was president of the United States. And she was a 16 year old autistic girl. Think about that. For a time the president of the United States, a person with literal tens of thousands of nuclear weapons at their disposal, decided that a 16 year old, foreign, autistic girl needed the focus of his ire. That’s punching down. And it’s classless.

          So if you think the United States is shit, that’s fine. But if you live in a place that you think is so much better than it, you can say that in a way that’s constructive. There’s no need to attack somebody or some thing you think you’re better than

          • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            The United States is entirely neutral.

            No. Definitely not. When it comes to violent crimes, with guns or otherwise, the US is anything but “neutral”. It is a sore point sticking out of all western countries.

            There’s no need to attack somebody or some thing you think you’re better than

            Well, it is a fact that shootings are an everyday occurrence in the US. Heck, even mass shootings (plural!) are a normal, everyday occurrence in the US, to the point that mass shootings with less than ten dead people rarely make the news anymore in the US. I’m not attacking you, I’m just stating the facts. But yes, I think any place in the world where things like that are not normal, everyday events is inherently a better place. Try to change my mind on that.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Entirely too many people base their self worth on what other people think of them.

      So “I didn’t get enough shinies” = “nobody really loves me” = “I’m a worthless human being”.

      Alternately “I didn’t get enough shinies for my kids” = “I’m a bad parent” = “I’m a worthless human being.”

      Then that gets reflected outwards, poorly. :(

      Breaking that cycle of seeking approval from other people is one of the hardest things you can do. At our core, we all seek validation on some level or other.

      • Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        It’s mostly people running a mental ledger then comparing the value of presents to how much they do in the relationship as a journal for the shortfall in gift value.

        Often siblings resenting one another for perceived (or even sometimes objectively clear) favouritism.