Of course Ethan Crumbley should be charged as an adult - he willfully pre-planned and committed an adult act.
Toddlers and kindergarteners do not commit mass murder. Let us not sugarcoat mass murder - specifically school shootings - and who perpetrates it. Let us not give teen mass killers special dispensation because of their age.
"Juvenile" vs "Adult" is FAR from cut and dried, black or white as some would have it, especially in the US, with its complex maze of state and federal laws. One's status depends on a dizzying, often seemingly contradictory array of
biological, social and
legal constructs of what is considered a "child" or an "adult". The very concept of "adolescence" itself did not exist before 1904.
Adult - Wikipedia
Some children / teens are very mature and responsible (more than we realize or will admit); too many adults never, ever mature. Bottom line, humans are not cookie-cutter. Exceptions and gray areas will always exist in human behavior - they must be acknowledged and taken into account, given context and circumstance.
IMHO, I think we in the US way too often underestimate those under 18, especially in this 21st century era. We want them to be innocent, sheltered "children" as long as possible. This is a huge, self-serving disservice to them.
Young people know the score. We don't give them nearly enough credit (or condemnation, if warranted) for their actions. We just chalk it up to "they're just kids!", as if that explains everything. Children / teens today are much more savvy (on all levels) than many want to believe, more so than say, 30, 40, 50 years ago (ah, the wonders of the internet and instant everything, for better and worse it's a whole cyber-education out there). We're mostly all too happy to readily attribute misdeeds and even crimes to naive, transitory "youth". A juvenile get-out-of-jail-free-card, "freebies" due to "youthful indiscretions". This is a grave mistake, to our collective social detriment. (How long should one infantilize and excuse a murderous, teen school shooter? How does one rehab a teen mass murderer?) This was not a case of shoplifting, egging a house or smoking in the restroom. Ethan Crumbley deliberately KILLED and WOUNDED humans and did not stop until he was stopped.
In my view, anyone old enough to learn how to handle / shoot a gun (
"my beauty") and premeditate a mass shooting is old enough to suffer the unvarnished, life-altering (read: adult) consequences. As for ultimate legal responsibility, there is no teen vs parents in this latest, wretched tragedy ... EC and both his parents are collectively 100% liable. Life in prison, no parole.
JMO