There are two news stories this week that really have to make us start wondering whether there is any truth to the statement that some kids are too young to know what they're doing.

The first is the story from Brazil (for once, something bad NOT happening in the U.S.) about the 16 year old who's been arrested as the youngest serial killer in history. He's supposedly owned up to killing 12 people in just one year, though the police can ONLY tie him to 6 with certainty. And the reason he did it; just because he liked killing people. That's it; no anger, nothing sexual, he just liked it. Sigh.

Then the news story that greeted me this morning about the 8 or 9 kids who plotted to harm one of the teachers of their school in some fashion. Each one of them brought some kind of weapon; well, not quite true since one of them brought rope. Now, when and where they planned to do it hasn't been told yet, but this was obviously not something that was random. Here's the scary part; these kids actually were able to keep the secret, and the only reason it came out is because one of the kids had a knife drop out of his backpack and other kids saw it and reported it.

What's oddly ironic is that the story of the 7 year old who brought a loaded gun to school yesterday almost got missed, as if it were an afterthought because it's getting to be common at this point.

At this point I'm not quite sure what to say. I'm not going to blame parents anymore for stuff like this, unless it comes out that they've done something specific to make their kids go bad. I will say that it's a whole new ballgame now; parents, be on your guard.