EDITORIAL — Why such an extreme reaction?

If your child comes running home crying that someone beat him, what would be your reaction? Do you confront the allegedly bully and make him account for his actions? Do you speak with the alleged bully’s parents to get to some resolution? Or do you go and shoot the alleged bully?

Unfortunately for a man in Navotas City, he chose the third option after his son came crying to him last February 20.

Police said after his son claimed a nine-year-old beat him up in Barangay NBBN, the suspect, only identified as a certain “Aljun,” took two of his friends and went looking for this nine-year-old.

They found him and confronted him. During confrontation, the suspect pulled out an improvised gun and aimed it at the boy’s head and fired. But the boy was able to duck and shot hit the boy behind him in the chest, with the slug exiting from his back. Miraculously, the boy survived.

The suspect is now facing charges for attempted murder as well as child abuse; his accomplices are still being sought.

He must feel so brave, a man going after a mere boy and almost killing another. Not just that, he felt he needed the protection of two other men.

So what led to this extreme reaction to something so trivial? Not that we trivialize bullying, but we aren’t exactly aware of the circumstances that led one child to allegedly beat another.

What state of mind was the suspect in when he decided to go and look for the boy? Or will he say that the decision to pull out the gun was a spur of the moment thing?

The fact that he pulled the trigger is telling; scaring someone with a gun is one thing and firing it is totally another.

In the long run, the suspect taught his own son something wrong; that the answer to violence is even more violence. But on the other hand, he will also teach him that actions will have consequences, especially actions not thought through thoroughly.